What annoys me about most self-help books is that they have no tragic sense. They have no sense that life is fundamentally incomplete rather than accidentally incomplete.


Alain de Botton

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Now they have a riddle.

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What Fucks me... is that we both are the same... we all walk on the same path... but everything is a...
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Eyes are just an sense organ ,if they are incapable to sense what is right and wrong. They are just ...
AISHWARYA YELWANDE
Our five senses are incomplete without the sixth -- a sense of humor.
SOURCE UNKNOWN
Our five senses are incomplete without the sixth - a sense of humor.
Our five senses are incomplete without the sixth - a sense of humor.
UNKNOWN
I have no sense of nostalgia. Tomorrow is what interests me.
FRANCOIS PINAULT
I know what they are against but have no sense of what they are for.
TREVOR MANUEL
It was a wealthy family, and they heard me talk about movies, and they told me I should go into movi...
MICHAEL PATRICK JANN
It is worthwhile engaging our sense in self-identity rather than self-dignity.
MUHAMMAD RAFIQ KHAN KAKAR
I read recently that the problem with stereotypes isn't that they are inaccurate, but that they&...
TAIYE SELASI
What I like about graduation speeches is that they're an opportunity for someone to make sense o...
BRUCE ERIC KAPLAN
I have a lot of incomplete short films and incomplete scripts out there.
BILL HADER
China no longer has an ideology that makes any sense to them, but what they do have is great pride i...
EVAN OSNOS
It's crazy: when it's raining, it makes no sense to me that people drive 10 miles an hour fa...
KATEE SACKHOFF
I realized that I'm lonely without her and she's incomplete without me. There will be no end to our ...
TAIMOOR MADNI
Be a good guide, tell me what you see, are sure is that?
Please try to describe the picture as ...
DEYTH BANGER
They have not told us it's postponed. There is no sense of delay at all.
BERT BRANTLEY
But if you're the type that agrees we don't really know what life is in the broad sense, then I have...
ALEKSANDER WOLSZCZAN
What I find most disturbing about Valentine's Day is, look, I get that you have to have a holida...
LEWIS BLACK
In a sense we are fortunate that most attackers want to control and use systems they attack rather t...
ALLAN COX
They have no sense when it comes to this, ... They go all out .
CHARLES WASHINGTON
To be mature you have to realize what you value most. It is extraordinary to discover that comparati...
ELEANOR ROOSEVELT
These guys might feel that their lives would be incomplete if they didn't try.
CARLOS WATSON
The sadness of the incomplete, the sadness that is often Life, but should never be Art.
E. M. FORSTER
They want to have a fabulous listener, they want sweet tenderness and no sense that you are in a hur...
PATCH ADAMS
The thing that people understand about the royal family is the sense of service that they have,
TONY BLAIR
I think the most important thing about coaching is that you have to have a sense of confidence about...
PHIL JACKSON
When we put things off until some future-probably mythical-Laterland, we drag the past into the futu...
PETER MCWILLIAMS
Many women have told me they remember where they were when they read the book, and how they felt sud...
CAROL GILLIGAN
There is no honor from this leadership, no class, no integrity, ... It's very hard for all of us who...
MELISSA GILBERT
That's a great sense of the fans we have. They care so much about the kids that they know Megan's st...
BILL FENNELLY
Fear is incomplete knowledge
AGATHA CHRISTIE
The aim of life is appreciation; there is no sense in not appreciating things; and there is no sense...
G. K. CHESTERTON
The aim of life is appreciation; there is no sense in not appreciating things; and there is no sense...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON
Cultural analysis is intrinsically incomplete. And, worse than that, the more deeply it goes the les...
CLIFFORD GEERTZ
Some designers retain a sense of humour about what they do, but others are deathly serious and have ...
HELENA CHRISTENSEN
I have no sense of humor about losing
RAFAEL NADAL
Books say: She did this because. Life says: She did this. Books are where things are explained to yo...
JULIAN BARNES
In Japan, you have no idea what they are saying, and they can't help you either. Nothing makes any s...
BILL MURRAY
Many people identify their sense of self with the problems they have, or think they have.
ECKHART TOLLE
They say that our sense of smell is one of the strongest triggers of memories. Of course, our sense ...
PHILIPPE COUSTEAU, JR.
The fixed stars signify the angel in man. That is why man orients himself by them; and that is why w...
OTTO WEININGER
Optimism is an expectation that good things are going to be plentiful. The wealthy generally have th...
JEAN CHATZKY
It makes sense that there is no sense without God.
EDITH SCHAEFFER
It makes sense that there is no sense without God
EDITH SCHAEFFER
Life without money seems to be incomplete,but money without life is absolutely useless.
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Father said I have no sense of humor at all. He said I was unequipped to meet life because I have no...
J.D. SALINGER
A man is incomplete until he is married. After that, he is finished.
ZSA ZSA GABOR
I feel there is a big sense of accomplishment and achievement and self worth through what you do no ...
XOCHI BIRCH
Theocratic and military authorities share one thing: they have no sense of humour.
BASSEM YOUSSEF
I get the sense when I go out to the schools [that] the teachers will tell you how they feel. And th...
KARL KILDOW
A one-eyed man is much more incomplete than a blind man, for he knows what it is that's lacking.
VICTOR HUGO
Passion is incomplete without confidence.
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
No sense makes sense
CHARLES MANSON
Some of the greatest moments in life come from moments that are incomplete.
NIKKI REED
We certainly played them when they had the greatest sense of urgency they can have. We expected that...
DENNIS FELTON
If we fail to instill a fixed sense of confidence in our children, we will raise handicapped childre...
CRAIG D. LOUNSBROUGH
Have you no sense of decency? ... Have you no sense of decency at long last?
CHARLES STILLMAN
There is a real hunger for information about Obama and a sense that information is not being covered...
DINESH D'SOUZA
Their performance speaks for itself. We have realized the past two years that we need to instill a s...
JASON BORNN
In Japan, you have no idea what they are saying, and they can't help you either. Nothing makes a...
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Next generations will not know what is to have childhood.
DANIEL MELGAçO
They have no idea if that signature belongs to the real person because they don't know who the real ...
TREY AARON
One of the many misconceptions about the blind is that they have greater hearing, sense of smell and...
ROSEMARY MAHONEY
Life is weird and wonderful like that, is it not.
SONYA.E.WILLIAMS
It is my opinion that human history can make no sense unless evil doings are recognized for what the...
SIMON CONWAY MORRIS
No one’s life ever goes as they planned. That truth alone should bring a sense of relief to everyo...
ANDRENA SAWYER
Europe has what we do not have yet, a sense of the mysterious and inexorable limits of life, a sense...
JAMES BALDWIN
It makes no sense economically that public money goes to help foreign workers and migrants in a regi...
MARION MARECHAL-LE PEN
They're braver than me. I tell them that they have to think no matter what, they're going to get thr...
ENRIQUE GARCIA
I have been in many countries, and I have found there people examining their own love of life, sense...
WILLIAM GOLDING
It's no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense.
MARK TWAIN
I have no expectation that any man will read history aright who thinks that what was done in a remot...
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
The brightest flashes in the world of thought are incomplete until they have been proven to have the...
JOHN TYNDALL
But people will do anything rather than admit that their lives have no meaning. No use, that is. No ...
MARGARET ATWOOD
However completely people might fulfil themselves in other spheres, if they don’t possess this und...
MADELEINE BOURDOUXHE
The comments I have heard range from incomplete to insulting,
PATRICK LEAHY
My career is a journey for me, and any journey is incomplete without the struggle.
YAMI GAUTAM
We understand God by everything in ourselves that is fragmentary, incomplete, and inopportune.
EMILE M. CIORAN
Some of the more popular life-centers for teens include Friends, Stuff, Enemies, Self, and Work. The...
SEAN COVEY
To me, redneck is a sense of self and a way of life.
GRETCHEN WILSON
What Republicans have done in my view is that they are systematically dismantling a sense of communi...
TOM VILSACK
how is it that "no" is shorter than "yes" and "maybe" and yet people still find it hard to say no? t...
PHILLIP BUYONDO
Some people say they use images to help them remember intricacies. Others say they just remember. If...
IAN HACKING
You know, that single girl life and that sense of isolation - that doesn't leave you just like t...
MARY CHAPIN CARPENTER
In De Rerum Natura, Lucretius pointed out a very central truth concerning the examined life. That is...
WILLIAM STYRON
They were lengthy and they were incomplete and they weren't useful because they were very difficult ...
JAMES MCLEAN
To have that sense of one's intrinsic worth which constitutes self-respect is potentially to have ev...
JOAN DIDION
I thought they were going to call it incomplete, it did kind of hit the ground. It really could have...
BEN TROUPE
People with low self esteem attempt to hide their sense of inferiority behind arrogance. They preten...
DR ANIL KUMAR SINHA
In some sort of crude sense, which no vulgarity, no humor, no overstatement can quite extinguish, th...
J. ROBERT OPPENHEIMER
What does it mean when I say that 'I don't see race?' It means that because I learned to see no diff...
MICHI TROTA
You'd feel incomplete now if you don't have a hip nightclub.
ANTHONY CURTIS
You know, I think I still have a sense that no matter what you do, no matter what you achieve, no ma...
ED BRADLEY
There are no clear boundary lines between what is physiological, what is psychological, and what is ...
JOHN ORTBERG
Our sense was that most people have been assuming they were safer - and, frankly, we were, too.
DR. DENNIS DURBIN
We are humiliated by what is powerful and mean, but awed by what is powerful and noble.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

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What bothers me is that there is so much emphasis on food, rather than gathering and meeting - so th...
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Though it may feel otherwise, enjoying life is no more dangerous than apprehending it with continuou...
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We read the weird tales in newspapers to crowd out the even weirder stuff inside us.
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There's a whole category of people who miss out by not allowing themselves to be weird enough.
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The materialistic view of happiness of our age starkly revealed in our understanding of the word "lu...
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We tend to think of philosophies as produced by professional philosophers. Traditionally, this has m...
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The romantic person instinctively sees marriage in terms of emotions, but what a couple actually get...
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Not being understood may be taken as a sign that there is much in one to understand.
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What makes people good communicators is, in essence, an ability not to be fazed by the more problema...
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A world where a majority had imbibed the lessons implicit within tragic art would be one in which th...
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Parents don't reveal how often they have bitten their tongue, fought back the tears, or been too...
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The humanities have been forced to disguise, both from themselves and their students, why their subj...
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I assemble my ideas in pieces on a computer file, then gradually find a place for them on a piece of...
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Sometimes my biography is interpreted as the upbringing of a French aristocrat. It was very, very di...
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Cynics are - beneath it all - only idealists with awkwardly high standards.
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The more people you have to ask for permission, the more dangerous a project gets.
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The arrogance that says analysing the relationship between reasons and causes is more important than...
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I passionately believe that's it's not just what you say that counts, it's also how you ...
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Forgiveness requires a sense that bad behaviour is a sign of suffering rather than malice.
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The start receives such disproportionate attention because it isn't deemed to be just one phase amon...
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Feeling lost, crazy and desperate belongs to a good life as much as optimism, certainty and reason.
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The pleasure we derive from journeys is perhaps dependent more on the mindset with which we travel t...
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We have to put aside the customary historical reading of works of art in order to invite art to resp...
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I remember going to university, and the people who'd left home for the first time looked at the ...
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The moment we cry in a film is not when things are sad but when they turn out to be more beautiful t...
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Everyone's more vulnerable than they seem, and I think men are more vulnerable. Once you get clo...
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At 'The School of Life', we take seriously anything that has to do with human fulfilment - a...
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A city like London is sociable in a sense that there are people gathering in bars and restaurants, c...
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I was foreign and Jewish, with a funny name, and was very small and hated sport, a real problem at a...
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As for despair, it comes about when I have been a fool and hate myself and despair of my personality...
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The idea that one might use art for 'instrumental' reasons tends to set off alarm bells at t...
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We are certainly influenced by role models, and if we are surrounded by images of beautiful rich peo...
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Getting to the top has an unfortunate tendency to persuade people that the system is OK after all.
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Used to do a lot of falling in love with people, almost in the street, and imagining that there woul...
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Since the beginning of the 20th century, the public's relationship to art has been weakened by a...
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There's a certain kind of insular, old-fashioned, upper-class Britishness that gives me the spoo...
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After Carol had left, as Symons threw away a pile of used tissues and rearranged the cushions on the...
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I am conscious of trying to stretch the boundaries of non-fiction writing. It's always surprised...
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Sweetness is the opposite of machismo, which is everywhere - and I really don't get on with mach...
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For thousands of years, it had been nature--and its supposed creator--that had had a monopoly on awe...
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Everyone returns us to a different sense of ourselves, for we become a little of who they think we a...
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Perhaps the easiest people to fall in love with are those about whom
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A person cannot be at once a libertine and a married Romantic, however compelling both paradigms mig...
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We owe it to the fields that our houses will not be the inferiors of the virgin land they have repla...
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On account of its scale and complexity, the world will always outstrip the capacity of any single bo...
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Kant and Hegel are interesting thinkers. But I am happy to insist that they are also terrible writer...
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The most attractive are not those who allow us to kiss them at once (we soon feel ungrateful) or tho...
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Booksellers are the most valuable destination for the lonely, given the numbers of books that were w...
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There are few more effective ways to promote tolerance between suspicious neighbours than to force t...
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There's a constant tension between the excitement of new people and security with one person. If...
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We are all more intelligent than we are capable, and awareness of the insanity of love has never sav...
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There is no one more likely to destroy us than the person we marry.
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The challenge lies in knowing how to bring this sort of day to a close. His mind has been wound to a...
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Many people in the intellectual elite are very scared of shouting. They insist on very quiet murmurs...
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as the determinants of high status keep shifting, so, too, naturally, will the triggers of status an...
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Far from rejecting outright any hierarchy of success or failure, philosophy instead reconfigures the...
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People who hold important positions in society are commonly labelled "somebodies," and their inverse...
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The desire for high status is never stronger than in situations where "ordinary" life fails to answe...
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There is a danger of developing a blanket distaste for modern life which could have its attractions ...
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Anyone who isn't embarrassed of who they were last year probably isn't learning enough.
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Most of what makes a book 'good' is that we are reading it at the right moment for us.
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A 'good job' can be both practically attractive while still not good enough to devote your entire li...
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There is no such thing as work-life balance. Everything worth fighting for unbalances your life.
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When does a job feel meaningful? Whenever it allows us to generate delight or reduce suffering in ot...
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One's doing well if age improves even slightly one's capacity to hold on to that vital truism: "This...
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A good half of the art of living is resilience.
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...workplace dynamics are no less complicated or unexpectedly intense than family relations, with on...
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We are humiliated by what is powerful and mean, but awed by what is powerful and noble.
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Literature has always had its circus side, its freaks and its frivolities - and maybe that's all par...
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I love the idea of a university as away from capitalist values, where people can do things that don&...
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What makes the prospect of death distinctive in the modern age is the background of permanent techno...
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It seems, in fact, that the more advanced a society is, the greater will be its interest in ruined t...
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It is one of the unexpected disasters of the modern age that our new unparalleled access to informat...
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In a secularising world, art has replaced religion as a touchstone of our reverence and devotion.
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Blind impatience is equally evident in the fruit section. Our ancestors might have delighted in the ...
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Bitterness: anger that forgot where it came from.
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Only as we mature does affection begin to depend on achievement.
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Don't despair: despair suggests you are in total control and know what is coming. You don't - surren...
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We are continuously challenged to discover new works of culture—and, in the process, we don’t al...
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We may seek a fortune for no greater reason than to secure the respect and attention of people who w...
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In Britain, because I live here, I can also run into problems of envy and competition. But all this ...
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Snobbery exists in all areas of life, not least literary criticism. By snobbery I mean, any method o...
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Pick up any newspaper or magazine, open the TV, and you'll be bombarded with suggestions of how to h...
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It is the most ambitious and driven among us who are the most sorely in need of having our reckless ...
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I've tried to write about Heathrow before and been escorted off the premises.
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Because I have this thing about birthdays--they always remind me of death and forced jollity.
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He was a volatile mixture of confidence and vulnerability. He could deliver extended monologues on p...
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The feeling one has no time to get anything done provides the pressure that guarantees one does get ...
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I'm fascinated by Comte's clear-eyed analysis of what was wrong with modern society, which i...
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The largest part of what we call 'personality' is determined by how we've opted to defend ourselves ...
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It is in dialogue with pain that many beautiful things acquire their value. Acquaintance with grief ...
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The most courageous act in politics is to try to understand your opponent.
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The idea of a book that can make a change to your life, that can affect your perspective, is a beaut...
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The philosophy I love is very selective. It is really just the bit that is involved in a search for ...
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It is hope--with regard to our careers, our love lives, our children, our politicians, and our plane...
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I learnt to stop fantasising about the perfect job or the perfect relationship because that can actu...
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He was marked out by his relentless ability to find fault with others' mediocrity--suggesting that a...
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There are books that speak to us of our own lives with a clarity we cannot match. They prevent the m...
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On paper, being good sounds great but a lot depends on the atmosphere of the workplace or community ...
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Travel is a lot like love.
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What is fascinating about marriage is why anyone wants to get married.
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I feel that the great challenge of our time is the communication of ideas.
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Learning to give up on perfection may be just about the most romantic move any of us could make.
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Work is a way of bringing order to chaos, and there's a basic satisfaction in seeing that we are...
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I like working with people. I believe change can only come through collaboration.
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I see religion as a storehouse of lots of really good ideas that a secular world should look at, rai...
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Rather than getting more spoilt with age, as difficulties pile up, epiphanies of gratitude abound.
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For the rest of history, for most of us, our bright promise will always fall short of being actualis...
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In 'Art as Therapy', we argue that art is a tool that can variously help to inspire, console...
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I was a very un-literary child, which might reassure parents with kids who don't read.
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In our more arrogant moments, the sin of pride—or superbia, in Augustine's Latin formulation—tak...
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Partially undermining the manufacturer's ability to assert that its work constituted a meaningful co...
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Pegging your contentment to the overall state of the world rather than of your own life: the basis o...
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The solution as consumers is - perhaps surprisingly - to take adverts very, very seriously. We shoul...
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We don't need to be constantly reasonable in order to have good relationships; all we need to have m...
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To look at the paper is to raise a seashell to one's ear and to be overwhelmed by the roar of humani...
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I think of myself as quite a shy person. But when I'm curious about something, I'll go quite...
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Artworks are especially good at helping our psyches in a variety of ways: they rebalance our moods, ...
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[T]he unsympathetic assessments we make of others are usually the result of nothing more sinister th...
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It is not only the hostility of others that may prevent us from questioning the status quo. Our will...
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The most boring and unproductive question one can ask of any religion is whether or not it is true.
ALAIN DE BOTTON
Whatever modern democracies may tell themselves about their commitment to free speech and to diversi...
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The true nature of bureaucracy may be nowhere more obvious to the observer than in a developing coun...
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To be loved by someone is to realize how much they share the same needs that lie at the heart of our...
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We fall in love because we long to escape from ourselves with someone as beautiful, intelligent, and...
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Being content is perhaps no less easy than playing the violin well: and requires no less practice.
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A storyteller who provided us with such a profusion of details would rapidly grow maddening. Unfortu...
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We used to build temples, and museums are about as close as secular society dares to go in facing up...
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The Anxiety of Sunday afternoon: your unlived lives and infinite possibility pressing upon the const...
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Blessed with riches and possibilities far beyond anything imagined by ancestors who tilled the unpre...
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We need a home in the psychological sense as much as we need one in the physical: to compensate for ...
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Even if our loved ones have assured us that they will be busy at work, even if they told us they hat...
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You normally have to be bashed about a bit by life to see the point of daffodils, sunsets and uneven...
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What a peculiar civilisation this was: inordinately rich, yet inclined to accrue its wealth through ...
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Despite the best efforts of critics and the hopes of authors, our tastes in books are probably as in...
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We would like to go and see the field that Millet…shows us in his Springtime, we would like Claude...
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Our feelings of anxiety are genuine but confused signals that something is amiss, and so need to be ...
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Paying tax should be framed as a glorious civic duty worthy of gratitude - not a punishment for maki...
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It was no longer her absence that wounded me, but my growing indifference to it. Forgetting, however...
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Perhaps it is true that we do not really exist until there is someone there to see us existing, we c...
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Every fall into love involves the triumph of hope over self-knowledge. We fall in love hoping we won...
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Nature puts us all in our places. Being made to feel small isn't something we welcome when it's done...
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in Flaubert’s eyes, that only entirely illiterate and uneducated Frenchmen now stood a chance of b...
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A clean conscience is the preserve of those without sufficient imagination.
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In the past, Flaubert implied, idiots had had no clue as to what the carbon structure of diamonds wa...
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Never too late to learn some embarrassingly basic, stupidly obvious things about oneself.
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But we would do well to meditate daily, rather as the religious do on their God, on the 9.5 trillion...
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To a shameful extent, the charm of marriage boils down to how unpleasant it is to be alone. This isn...
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One of the best protections against disappointment is to have a lot going on.
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What kills us isn't one big thing, but thousands of tiny obligations we can't turn down for fear of ...
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Booksellers are the most valuable destination for the lonely, given the numbers of books written bec...
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It is precisely when we hear little from our partner which frightens, shocks, or sickens us that we ...
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Unrequited love may be painful, but it is safely painful, because it does not involve inflicting dam...
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It's clear to me that there is no good reason for many philosophy books to sound as complicated as t...
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Jarenlang kwam ik bij het boodschappen doen langs een huis dat weliswaar een van de lelijkste gebouw...
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Snobbery exists in all areas of life, not least literary criticism. By snobbery I mean, any method o...
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Kant and Hegel are interesting thinkers. But I am happy to insist that they are also terrible writer...
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I passionately believe that's it's not just what you say that counts, it's also how you say it - tha...
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I am in general a very pessimistic person with an optimistic, day-to-day take on things. The bare fa...
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