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That Said, Deciding To Avoid Other People Does Not Necessarily Equate With Having No Desire Whatsoever For Company; It May Simply Reflect A Dissatisfaction With What—or Who—is Available. Cynics Are, In The End, Only Idealists With Awkwardly High Standards. In Chamfort's Words, 'it Is Sometimes Said Of A Man Who Lives Alone That He Does Not Like Society. This Is Like Saying Of A Man That He Does Not Like Going For Walks Because He Is Not Fond Of Walking At Night In The Forêt De Bondy.

-Alain De Botton

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That Said, Deciding To

Alain De Botton

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That Said, Deciding To Avoid Other People Does Not Necessarily Equate With Having No Desire Whatsoever For Company; It May Simply Reflect A Dissatisfaction With What—or Who—is Available. Cynics Are, In The End, Only Idealists With Awkwardly High Standards. In Chamfort's Words, 'it Is Sometimes Said Of A Man Who Lives Alone That He Does Not Like Society. This Is Like Saying Of A Man That He Does Not Like Going For Walks Because He Is Not Fond Of Walking At Night In The Forêt De Bondy.

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The Materialistic View Of Happiness Of Our Age Starkly Revealed In Our Understanding Of The Word "luxury.

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Out Of The Millions Of People We Live Among, Most Of Whom We Habitually Ignore And Are Ignored By In Turn, There Are Always A Few That Hold Hostage Our Capacity For Happiness, Whom We Could Recognize By Their Smell Alone And Whom We Would Rather Die Than Be Without.

You Have To Be Quite Heavily Invested In Someone To Do Them The Honour Of Telling Them You're Annoyed With Them.

The Only People We Can Think Of As Normal Are Those We Don't Yet Know Very Well.

I Went To Church And Couldn't Swallow It. The Music Was Nice But I Don't Belong There.

On Paper, Being Good Sounds Great But A Lot Depends On The Atmosphere Of The Workplace Or Community We Live In. We Tend To Become Good Or Bad Depending On The Cues Sent Out Within A Particular Space.

It Is In Books, Poems, Paintings Which Often Give Us The Confidence To Take Seriously Feelings In Ourselves That We Might Otherwise Never Have Thought To Acknowledge.

What Is Fascinating About Marriage Is Why Anyone Wants To Get Married.

It Is In Dialogue With Pain That Many Beautiful Things Acquire Their Value. Acquaintance With Grief Turns Out To Be One Of The More Unusual Prerequisites Of Architectural Appreciation. We Might, Quite Aside From All Other Requirements, Need To Be A Little Sad Before Buildings Can Properly Touch Us.

Envy: A Confused, Tangled Guide To One's Own Ambitions.

Our Sense Of What Is Valuable Will Hence Be Radically Distorted If We Must Perpetually Condemn As Tedious Everything We Lack, Simply Because We Lack It.

A Great Writer Picks Up On Those Things That Matter. It’s Almost Like Their Radar Is Attuned To The Most Significant Moments.

The Company Of Certain People May Excite Our Generosity And Sensitivity, While That Of Others Awakens Our Competitiveness And Envy.

We Accept The Need To Train Extensively To Fly A Plane; But Think Instinct Should Be Enough For Marrying And Raising Kids.

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Art Cannot Single-handedly Create Enthusiasm... It Merely Contributes To Enthusiasm And Guides Us To Be More Conscious Of Feelings That We Might Previously Have Experienced Only Tentatively Or Hurriedly.

At The Beginning Of Human History, As We Struggled To Light Fires And To Chisel Fallen Trees Into Rudimentary Canoes, Who Could Have Predicted That Long After We Had Managed To Send Men To The Moon And Areoplanes To Australasia, We Would Still Have Such Trouble Knowing How To Tolerate Ourselves, Forgive Our Loved Ones, And Apologise For Our Tantrums?

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For All His Understanding Of Worldly Concerns, When It Came To Fathoming The Deeper Meaning Of His Own Furious Activity, Sir Bob Displayed The Sort Of Laziness For Which He Himself Had No Patience In Others. He Appeared To Have Only A Passing Interest In The Overall Purpose Of His Financial Accumulation.

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Nowhere Was The Airport's Charm More Concentrated Than On The Screens Placed At Intervals Across The Terminal Which Announced, In Deliberately Workmanlike Fonts, The Itineraries Of Aircraft About To Take To The Skies. These Screens Implied A Feeling Of Infinite And Immediate Possibility: They Suggested The Ease With Which We Might Impulsively Approach A Ticket Desk And, Within A Few Hours, Embark For A Country Where The Call To Prayer Rang Out Over Shuttered Whitewashed Houses, Where We Understood Nothing Of The Language And Where No One Knew Our Identities.

It Should Not Be Illiers-combray That We Visit: A Genuine Homage To Proust Would Be To Look At Our World Through His Eyes, Not Look At His World Through Our Eyes.

We Are All More Intelligent Than We Are Capable, And Awareness Of The Insanity Of Love Has Never Saved Anyone From The Disease.

The Pre-scientific Age, Whatever Its Deficiencies, Had At Least Offered Its Members The Peace Of Mind That Follows From Knowing All Man-made Achievements To Be Nothing Next To The Grandeur Of The Universe. We, More Blessed In Our Gadgetry But Less Humble In Our Outlook, Have Been Left... Having No More Compelling Repository Of Veneration Than Our Brilliant, Precise, Blinkered And Morally Troubling Fellow Human Beings.

Our Capacity To Draw Happiness From Aesthetic Objects Or Material Goods In Fact Seems Critically Dependent On Our First Satisfying A More Important Range Of Emotional Or Psychological Needs, Among Them The Need For Understanding, For Love, Expression And Respect.

As Victims Of Hurt, We Frequently Don't Bring Up What Ails Us, Because So Many Wounds Look Absurd In The Light Of Day.

It Would Scarcely Be Acceptable, For Example, To Ask In The Course Of An Ordinary Conversation What Our Society Holds To Be The Purpose Of Work.

Do You Love Me Enough That I May Be Weak With You? Everyone Loves Strength, But Do You Love Me For My Weakness? That Is The Real Test.

Most Of What Makes A Book 'good' Is That We Are Reading It At The Right Moment For Us.

You Normally Have To Be Bashed About A Bit By Life To See The Point Of Daffodils, Sunsets And Uneventful Nice Days.

Much Of The Really Serious Trouble In The World Gets Going With A Sense Of Humiliation.

There Is No Such Thing As Work-life Balance. Everything Worth Fighting For Unbalances Your Life.

Distress At Losing An Object Can Be As Much A Frustration At The Intellectual Mystery Of The Disappearance As About The Loss Itself.

Maturity: The Confidence To Have No Opinions On Many Things.

Feeling Lost, Crazy And Desperate Belongs To A Good Life As Much As Optimism, Certainty And Reason.

One Kind Of Good Book Should Leave You Asking: How Did The Author Know That About Me?

Literature Deserves Its Prestige For One Reason Above All Others - Because It's A Tool To Help Us Live And Die With A Little Bit More Wisdom, Goodness, And Sanity.

We Keep A Special Place In Our Hearts For People Who Refuse To Be Impressed By Us.

Though It May Feel Otherwise, Enjoying Life Is No More Dangerous Than Apprehending It With Continuous Anxiety And Gloom.

I Thought About Societies Where Exceptional Fortunes Are Built Up In Industries With Very Little Connection To Out Sincere And Significant Needs, Industries Where It Is Difficult To Escape From The Disparity Between A Seriousness Of Means And A Triviality Of Ends.

[t]he Unsympathetic Assessments We Make Of Others Are Usually The Result Of Nothing More Sinister Than Our Habit Of Looking At Them In The Wrong Way, Through Lenses Clouded By Distraction, Exhaustion And Fear, Which Blind Us To The Fact That They Are Really, Despite A Thousand Differences, Just Altered Versions Of Ourselves: Fellow Fragile, Uncertain, Flawed Beings Likewise Craving Love And In Urgent Need Of Forgiveness.

It Is Perhaps Sad Books That Best Console Us When We Are Sad, And To Lonely Service Stations That We Should Drive When There Is No One For Us To Hold Or Love.

By Travelling Across Frontiers, On Horseback And In The Imagination, Montaigne Invited Us To To Exchange Local Prejudices And The Self Division They Induced For Less Constraining Identities As Citizens Of The World.

The Greatest Works Of Art Speak To Us Without Knowing Us.

Endeavoring To Purchase Something We Think Beautiful May In Fact Be The Most Unimaginative Way Of Dealing With The Longing It Excites In Us, Just As Trying To Sleep With Someone May Be The Bluntest Response To A Feeling Of Love.

A 'good Job' Can Be Both Practically Attractive While Still Not Good Enough To Devote Your Entire Life To.

Not Good Enough

Work Finally Begins When The Fear Of Doing Nothing Exceeds The Fear Of Doing It Badly.

The Inability To Live In The Present Lies In The Fear Of Leaving The Sheltered Position Of Anticipation Or Memory, And So Of Admitting That This Is The Only Life That One Is Ever Likely (heavenly Intervention Aside) To Live.

One Wants Never To Give Up This Crystalline Perspective. One Wants To Keep Counterpositioning Home With What One Knows Of Alternative Realities, As They Exist In Tunis Or Hyderabad. One Wants Never To Forget That Nothing Here Is Normal, That The Streets Are Different In Wisebaden, And Louyang, That This Is Just One Of Many Possible Worlds.

The Bourgeois Thinkers Of The Eighteenth Century Thus Turned Aristotle's Formula On Its Head: Satisfactions Which The Greek Philosopher Had Identified With Leisure Were Now Transposed To The Sphere Of Work, While Tasks Lacking In Any Financial Reward Were Drained Of All Significance And Left To The Haphazard Attentions Of Decadent Dilettantes. It Now Seemed As Impossible That One Could Be Happy And Unproductive As It Had Once Seemed Unlikely That One Could Work And Be Human.

It Is Not Just Nature That Defies Us. Human Life Is As Overwhelming... If We Spend Time In It [the Vast Spaces Of Nature], They May Help Us To Accept More Graciously The Great, Unfathomable Events That Molest Our Lives And Will Inevitably Return Us To Dust.

One Of Love's Greatest Drawbacks Is That, For A While At Least, It Is In Danger Of Making Us Happy.

The Study Of Maps And The Perusal Of Travel Books Aroused In Me A Secret Fascination That Was At Times Almost Irresistible.

Most Good Thinking Has Its Origin In Fear.

Journeys Are The Midwives Of Thought. Few Places Are More Conducive To Internal Conversations Than Moving Planes, Ships Or Trains.

It Is The Most Ambitious And Driven Among Us Who Are The Most Sorely In Need Of Having Our Reckless Hopes Dampened Through Immersive Dousings In The Darkness Which Religions Have Explored. This Is A Particular Priority For Secular Americans, Perhaps The Most Anxious And Disappointed People On Earth, For Their Nation Infuses Them With The Most Extreme Hopes About What They May Be Able To Achieve In Their Working Lives And Relationships.

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Richard Nelson Bolles

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