Adult life Quote by Alain de Botton

“We should give chaos pride of place once a year or so, designating occasions on which we can be briefly exempted from the two greatest pressures of secular adult life: having to be rational and having to be faithful.” quote by Alain de Botton — Download Open image

““We should give chaos pride of place once a year or so, designating occasions on which we can be briefly exempted from the two greatest pressures of secular adult life: having to be rational and having to be faithful.””

Alain de Botton

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“To be mature is, we're told, to move beyond possessiveness. Jealousy is for babies. The mature person knows that no one owns anyone.”

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“He feared that by leaving her he would ruin her life - so he stayed, and did just that.”

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You have to be quite heavily invested in someone to do them the honour of telling them you're annoyed with them.

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“The Anxiety of Sunday afternoon: your unlived lives and infinite possibility pressing upon the constraints of reality.”

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Those who divorce aren't necessarily the most unhappy, just those neatly able to believe their misery is caused by one other person.

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“We could not be fulfilled if we weren't inauthentic some of the time—inauthentic, that is, in relation to such things as our passing desires…

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“Insofar as we appreciate order, it is when we perceive it as being accompanied by complexity, when we feel that a variety of elements…

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I like the values associated with a medical family - common sense, being practical but also thoughtful.

Alain de Botton

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“Anyone who urgently needs us deserves, in the true book of love, to be our friend.”

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“We can then recognize that we invented religions to serve two central needs which continue to this day and which secular society has not been able to solve with any particular skill: first, the need to live together in communities in harmony, despite our deeply rooted selfish and violent impulses. And second, the need to cope with terrifying degrees of…

Alain de Botton

“Half the ingratitude and complacency in the world down to how slowly and imperceptibly most good and bad things unfold.”

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It is perhaps when our lives are at their most problematic that we are likely to be most receptive to beautiful things.

Alain de Botton

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“She could not remember ever being truly happy in her adult life; her years with her mother had been built up devotedly around small guilts and small reproaches, constant weariness, and unending despair. Without ever wanting to become reserved and shy, she had spent so long alone, with no one to love, that it was difficult for her to talk,…

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“So, I begin each day with a gesture of cynicism, and close it with a gesture of faith; or, if you prefer, begin it by reminding myself that, for me at least, goals and objectives are without value, and close it by demonstrating that the fact is irrelevant. A gesture of temporality, a gesture of eternity. It is in the…

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