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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.
-Alain De Botton
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Those Who Divorce Aren't

Alain De Botton
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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.

Understanding the Quote: "those who divorce aren't necessarily the most unhappy, just those neatly able..."

This quote by Alain De Botton reflects deeply on the theme of believe. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Believe, Divorce, Unhappy, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how Alain de Botton interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About Alain De Botton

Alain De Botton is celebrated for insightful thoughts on believe and divorce. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

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Topic
Believe
Divorce
Unhappy
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Serious Journalists Often Imagine Society Is Adrift Because People Don't Know Certain Things. Yet Often, They Know But Just Don't Care. So The Task Of Serious Journalism Isn't Just To Lay Out Truths. It Is To Make Vital Truths Compelling To A Big Audience.
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Tasks
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There May Be Significant Things To Learn About People By Looking At What Annoys Them Most.
Significant Things
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Objectively Good Spaces To Work Rarely End Up Being So; In Their Faultlessness, Quiet And Well-equipped Studios Have A Habit Of Rendering The Fear Of Failure Overwhelming. Original Thoughts Are Like Shy Animals. We Sometimes Have To Look The Other Way - Towards A Busy Street Or Terminal - Before They Run Out Of Their Burrows.
Running
Animal
Space
Socrates, On Being Insulted In The Marketplace, Asked By A Passerby, "don't You Worry About Being Called Names?" Retorted, "why? Do You Think I Should Resent It If An Ass Had Kicked Me?
Thinking
Names
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One Of The Unexpectedly Important Things That Art Can Do For Us Is To Teach Us How To Suffer More Successfully.
Art
Suffering
Important
Most Victories Are, In The Best Way, Acts Of Revenge.
Revenge
Victory
Way
These Inventors Were Elevating The Formulation Of Entrepreneurial Ideas To The Status Of A Visionary Activity. Though Forced To Justify Their Efforts In The Pragmatic Language Of Venture Capital, They Were At Heart Utopian Thinkers Intent On Transforming The World.
Heart
Ideas
Effort
Intuition Is Unconscious Accumulated Experience Informing Judgement In Real Time.
Real
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Intuition
One Of The Best Protections Against Disappointment Is To Have A Lot Going On.
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Protection
It Is Striking How Much More Seriously We Are Likely To Be Taken After We Have Been Dead A Few Centuries.
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There Are People Who Say, 'oh This Guy Is Quite Thick.' I Think The Reason Is That, Increasingly, I Don't Mind Being Simple In Terms Of Literary Expression. Others Say, 'no, No, No. He Went To Cambridge. He Got A Good Degree. He Must Be Einstein.'
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The Challenge For A Human Now Is To Be More Interesting To Another Than His Or Her Smartphone.
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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.
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Most Of What Makes A Book 'good' Is That We Are Reading It At The Right Moment For Us.
Book
Reading
Moments
Sublime Places Repeat In Grand Terms A Lesson That Ordinary Life Typically Teaches Viciously: That The Universe Is Mightier Than We Are, That We Are Frail And Temporary And Have No Alternative But To Accept Limitations On Our Will; That We Must Bow To Necessities Greater Than Ourselves.
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The Study Of Maps And The Perusal Of Travel Books Aroused In Me A Secret Fascination That Was At Times Almost Irresistible.
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Secret
Fascination
We Should Not Be Frightened By Appearances.
Appearance
Should
Frightened
It Is No Coincidence That The Western Attraction To Sublime Landscapes Developed At Precisely The Moment When Traditional Beliefs In God Began To Wane.
Sublime
Religion
Landscape
Being Funny Should Be An Incidental Byproduct Of Trying To Get To Something Truthful, Not A Destination In Itself.
Trying
Truthful
Should
I Am Conscious Of Trying To Stretch The Boundaries Of Non-fiction Writing. It's Always Surprised Me How Little Attention Many Non-fiction Writers Pay To The Formal Aspects Of Their Work.
Writing
Trying
Attention
It Would Be Foolish To Describe The Logistics Hub As Merely Ugly, For It Has The Horrifying, Soulless, Immaculate Beauty Characteristic Of Many Of The Workplaces Of The Modern World.
Would Be
World
Ugly
Unhappiness Can Stem From Having Only One Perspective To Play With.
Happiness
Play
Perspective
The Best Cure For One's Bad Tendencies Is To See Them In Action In Another Person.
Action
Tendencies
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The Genius Of Religions Is That They Structure The Inner Life.
Genius
Structure
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It Was No Longer Her Absence That Wounded Me, But My Growing Indifference To It. Forgetting, However Calming, Was Also A Reminder Of Infidelity To What I Had At One Time Held So Dear.
Infidelity
Growing
Calming
Distress At Losing An Object Can Be As Much A Frustration At The Intellectual Mystery Of The Disappearance As About The Loss Itself.
Loss
Frustration
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Not Being Understood May Be Taken As A Sign That There Is Much In One To Understand.
Wisdom
Taken
Acceptance
To Design Means Forcing Ourselves To Unlearn What We Believe We Already Know, Patiently To Take Apart The Mechanisms Behind Our Reflexes And To Acknowledge The Mystery And Stupefying Complexity Of Everyday Gestures Like Switching Off A Light Of Turning On A Tap
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Mean
Light
Architects Themselves Tend To Shy Away From The Word, Preferring Instead To Talk About The Manipulation Of Space.
Space
Shy
Manipulation
A Great Writer Picks Up On Those Things That Matter. It’s Almost Like Their Radar Is Attuned To The Most Significant Moments.
Matter
Moments
Significant
There Is Always The Option Of Being Emotionally Lazy, That Is, Of Quoting.
Lazy
Sloth
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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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Our Greatest Furies Spring From Events Which Violate Our Sense Of The Ground Of Our Existence.
Spring
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Philosophy Had Supplied Socrates With Convictions In Which He Had Been Able To Have Rational, As Opposed To Hysterical, Confidence When Faced With Disapproval.
Philosophy
Able
Hysterical
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God
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Religious
We Envy Only Those Whom We Feel Ourselves To Be Like; We Envy Only Members Of Our Reference Group. There Are Few Successes More Unendurable Than Those Of Our Close Friends.
Envy
Groups
Close Friends
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.
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Curiosity Might Be Pictured As Being Made Up Of Chains Of Small Questions Extending Outwards, Sometimes Over Huge Distances, From A Central Hub Composed Of A Few Blunt, Large Questions.
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Pegging Your Contentment To The Overall State Of The World Rather Than Of Your Own Life: The Basis Of Morality, Or A Sort Of Madness?
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Morality
If The Behaviour Of Babies And Small Children Is Any Guide, We Emerge Into The World With Our Tendencies To Imbalance Already Well Entrenched. In Our Playpens And High Chairs, We Are Rarely Far From Displaying Either Hysterical Happiness Or Savage Disappointment, Love Or Rage, Mania Or Exhaustion--and, Despite The Growth Of A More Temperate Exterior In Adulthood, We Seldom Succeed In Laying Claim To Lasting Equilibrium, Traversing Our Lives Like Stubbornly Listing Ships On Choppy Seas.
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We May Not Agree With What Religions Are Trying To Teach Us, But We Can Admire The Institutional Way In Which They're Doing It.
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Though Debts Are Condemned In The Financial World, The World Of Friendship And Love May Perversely Depend On Well-managed Debts.
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Our Minds Are Susceptible To The Influence Of External Voices Telling Us What We Require To Be Satisfied, Voices That May Drown Out The Faint Sounds Emitted By Our Souls And Distract Us From The Careful, Arduous Task Of Accurately Naming Our Priorities.
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Being Incomprehensible Offers Unparalleled Protection Against Having Nothing To Say...but Writing With Simplicity Requires Courage, For There Is A Danger That One Will Be Overlooked, Dismissed As Simpleminded By Those With A Tenacious Belief That The Impassable Prose Is A Hallmark Of Intelligence.
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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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Booksellers Are The Most Valuable Destination For The Lonely, Given The Numbers Of Books That Were Written Because Authors Couldn't Find Anyone To Talk To.
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As The Determinants Of High Status Keep Shifting, So, Too, Naturally, Will The Triggers Of Status Anxiety Be Altered.
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Triggers
The Telephone Becomes An Instrument Of Torture In The Demonic Hands Of A Beloved Who Doesn't Call.
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The Good Parent: Someone Who Doesn't Mind, For A Time, Being Hated By Their Children.
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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 - That The Success Of Your Argument Critically Depends On Your Manner Of Presenting It.
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Presenting
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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You Normally Have To Be Bashed About A Bit By Life To See The Point Of Daffodils, Sunsets And Uneventful Nice Days.
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The Mind May Be Reluctant To Think Properly When Thinking Is All It Is Supposed To Do; The Task Can Be As Paralysing As Having To Tell A Joke Or Mimic An Accent On Demand.
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If One Felt Successful, There'd Be So Little Incentive To Be Successful.
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Incentives
Littles
I Went To Church And Couldn't Swallow It. The Music Was Nice But I Don't Belong There.
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Church
The Greatest Works Of Art Speak To Us Without Knowing Us.
Art
Knowing
Speak
It's Very Hard To Respect People On Holiday - Everybody Looks So Silly At The Beach, It Makes You Hate Humanity - But When You See People At Their Work They Elicit Respect, Whether It's A Mechanic, A Stonemason Or An Accountant.
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Hate
Silly
The Longing For Destiny Is Nowhere Stronger Than In Our Romantic Life.
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Stronger
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We Might Have Been Ready To Offer Sympathy, But In Actuality There Were Stronger Reasons To Want To Congratulate Her For Having Found Such A Powerful Motive To Feel Sad. We Should Have Envied Her For Having Located Someone Without Whom She So Firmly Felt She Could Not Survive, Beyond The Gate Let Along In A Bare Student Bedroom In A Suburb Of Rio. If She Had Been Able To View Her Situation From A Sufficient Distance, She Might Have Been Able To Recognise This As One Of The High Points In Her Life.
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Every Time We Feel Satisfied With What We Have, We Can Be Counted As Rich, However Little We May Actually Possess.
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Rich
Writing Isn’t A Career Choice. It’s Self-medication That Over Time Precipitates The Madness It Was Meant To Ward Off.
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Literature Deeply Stands Opposed To The Dominant Value System-the One That Rewards Money And Power. Writers Are On The Other Side-they Make Us Sympathetic To Ideas And Feelings That Are Of Deep Importance But Can’t Afford Airtime In A Commercialized, Status-consciou S, And Cynical World.
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Work Is Most Fulfilling When You're At The Comfortable, Exciting Edge Of Not Quite Knowing What You Are Doing.
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Exciting
Fulfilling
I Was Foreign And Jewish, With A Funny Name, And Was Very Small And Hated Sport, A Real Problem At An English Prep School. So The Way To Get Round It Was To Become The School Joker, Which I Did Quite Effectively - I Was Always Fooling Around To Make The People Who Would Otherwise Dump Me In The Loo Laugh.
Sports
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School
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.
Self
Imagination
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Anxiety Is The Handmaiden Of Contemporary Ambition.
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Anxiety
Contemporary
What We Call A Home Is Merely Any Place That Succeeds In Making More Consistenly Available To Us The Important Truths Which The Wider World Ignores, Or Which Our Distracted And Irresolute Selves Have Trouble Holding Onto." (p123) Architecture Of Happiness
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Important
It Seems That Most Of Us Could Benefit From A Brush With A Near-fatal Disaster To Help Us Recognise The Important Things That We Are Too Defeated Or Embittered To Recognise From Day To Day.
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Insomnia Is A Glamorous Term For Thoughts You Forgot To Have In The Day.
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There Are Selections So Acute That They Come To Define A Place, With The Result That We Can No Longer Travel Through That Landscape Without Being Reminded Of What A Great Artist Noticed There.
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One Of The Better Guarantors Of Ending Up In A Good Relationship: An Advanced Capacity To Be Alone.
Good Relationship
Capacity
The More Dignity Is Widely And Freely Available In A Society, The Less People Want To Be Famous.
People
Want
Dignity
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Jobs
Work
Not Good Enough
Instead Of Bringing Back 1600 Plants, We Might Return From Our Journeys With A Collection Of Small Unfêted But Life-enhancing Thoughts.
Travel
Journey
Might
The Greatest Difficulty Of Travel Is That One Is Forced To Take Oneself Along.
Difficulty
Oneself
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Art
People
Anyone Who Isn't Embarrassed Of Who They Were Last Year Probably Isn't Learning Enough.
Years
Lasts
Enough
The Mind Does Most Of Its Best Thinking When We Aren't There. The Answers Are There In The Morning.
Morning
Thinking
Mind
Every Fall Into Love Involves The Triumph Of Hope Over Self-knowledge. We Fall In Love Hoping We Won't Find In Another What We Know Is In Ourselves, All The Cowardice, Weakness, Laziness, Dishonesty, Compromise, And Stupidity. We Throw A Cordon Of Love Around The Chosen One And Decide That Everything Within It Will Somehow Be Free Of Our Faults. We Locate Inside Another A Perfection That Eludes Us Within Ourselves, And Through Our Union With The Beloved Hope To Maintain (against The Evidence Of All Self-knowledge) A Precarious Faith In Our Species.
Falling In Love
Elude Us
Self
The Secular World Is Full Of Holes. We Have Secularized Badly.
God
Soul
World
It Is By Finding Out What Something Is Not That One Comes Closest To Understanding What It Is.
Understanding
Findings
Closest
Differ Though We Might With Christianity's View Of What Precisely Our Souls Need, It Is Hard To Discredit The Provocative Underlying Thesis, Which Seems No Less Relevant In The Secular Realm Than In The Religious One-that We Have Within Us A Precious, Childlike, Vulnerable Core Which We Should Nourish And Nurture On Its Turbulent Journey Through Life.
Religious
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Journey
Rage Is Caused By A Conviction, Almost Comic In Its Optimistic Origins (however Tragic In Its Effects), That A Given Frustration Has Not Been Written Into The Contract Of Life.
Optimistic
Frustration
Rage
Memory Is... Similar To Anticipation: An Instrument Of Simplification And Selection.
Memories
Anticipation
Instruments
Most Good Thinking Has Its Origin In Fear.
Thinking
Good Thinking
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.
Beautiful
Sleep
Thinking
How Do The Stems Connect To The Roots?' 'where Is The Mist Coming From?' 'why Does One Tree Seem Darker Than Another?' These Questions Are Implicitly Asked And Answered In The Process Of Sketching.
Roots
Tree
Doe
.. If You Asked Most People Whether They Believed In Love Or Not, They’d Probably Say They Didn’t. Yet That’s Not Necessarily What They Truly Think. It’s Just The Way They Defend Themselves Against What They Want. They Believe In It, But Pretend They Don’t Until They’re Allowed To. Most People Would Throw Away All Their Cynicism If They Could. The Majority Just Never Gets The Chance.
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Thinking
People
Journeys Are The Midwives Of Thought. Few Places Are More Conducive To Internal Conversations Than Moving Planes, Ships Or Trains.
Moving
Journey
Ships
Let Death Find Us As We Are Building Up Our Matchstick Protests Against Its Waves.
Building Up
Wave
Matchsticks
We Feel Something, And Reach Out For The Nearest Phrase Or Hum With Which To Communicate, But Which Fails To Do Justice To What Has Induced Us To Do So....we Stay On The Outside Of Our Impressions, As If Staring At Them Through A Frosted Window, Superficially Related To Them, Yet Estranged From Whatever Has Eluded Casual Definition.
Justice
Phrases
Definitions
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.
Eye
Our World
Would Be
Must Being In Love Always Mean Being In Pain?
Pain
Mean
Being In Love
Maturity: The Confidence To Have No Opinions On Many Things.
Inspiring
Maturity
Opinion
Why, Then, If Expensive Things Cannot Bring Us Remarkable Joy, Are We So Powerfully Drawn To Them?
Joy
Remarkable
Ifs
When Proust Urges Us To Evaluate The World Properly, He Repeatedly Reminds Us Of The Value Of Modest Scenes.
World
Proust
Scene
In The Gap Between Who We Wish One Day To Be And Who We Are At Present, Must Come Pain, Anxiety, Envy And Humiliation.
Pain
Envy
Anxiety
The Activities Of Drawing, Eating And Drinking, All Involve Assimilations By The Self Of Desirable Elements From The World, A Transfer Of Goodness From Without To Within.
Drinking
Self
Drawing
Religions Are So Subtle, So Complicated, So Intelligent In Many Ways That They're Not Fit To Be Abandoned To The Religious Alone; They're For All Of Us.
God
Religious
Intelligent
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.
Mean
Connections
Needs
Unrequited Love May Be Painful, But It Is Safely Painful, Because It Does Not Involve Inflicting Damage On Anyone But Oneself, A Private Pain That Is As Bittersweet As It Is Self-induced. But As Soon As Love Is Reciprocated, One Must Be Prepared To Give Up The Passivity Of Simply Being Hurt And Take On The Responsibility Of Perpetrating Hurt Oneself.
Hurt
Giving Up
Pain
A Lump Rises In Our Throat At The Sight Of Beauty From An Implicit Knowledge That The Happiness It Hints At Is The Exception.
Sight
Hints
Throat
According To One Influential Wing Of Modern Secular Society There Are Few More Disreputable Fates Than To End Up Being 'like Everyone Else' For 'everyone Else' Is A Category That Comprises The Mediocre And The Conformist, The Boring And The Suburban. The Goal Of All Right-thinking People Should Be To Mark Themselves Off From The Crowd And 'stand Out' In Whatever Way Their Talents Allow.
Fate
Thinking
Secular Society
People Who Hold Important Positions In Society Are Commonly Labelled "somebodies," And Their Inverse "nobodies"-both Of Which Are, Of Course, Nonsensical Descriptors, For We Are All, By Necessity, Individuals With Distinct Identities And Comparable Claims On Existence. Such Words Are Nevertheless An Apt Vehicle For Conveying The Disparate Treatment Accorded To Different Groups. Those Without Status Are All But Invisible: They Are Treated Brusquely By Others, Their Complexities Trampled Upon And Their Singularities Ignored.
People
Important
Identity
Work Finally Begins When The Fear Of Doing Nothing Exceeds The Fear Of Doing It Badly.
Writing
Doing Nothing
Exceed
When Work Is Not Going Well, It's Useful To Remember That Our Identities Stretch Beyond What Is On The Business Card, That We Were People Long Before We Became Workers - And Will Continue To Be Human Once We Have Put Our Tools Down Forever.
Long
People
Forever
Politics Is So Difficult, It's Generally Only People Who Aren't Quite Up To The Task Who Feel Convinced They Are.
People
Tasks
Difficult
It Is Perhaps Sad Books That Best Console Us When We Are Sad.
Book
Sadness
Console
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.
Art
Feelings
Might
If Cynicism And Love Lie At Opposite Ends Of A Spectrum, Do We Not Sometimes Fall In Love In Order To Escape The Debilitating Cynicism To Which We Are Prone? Is There Not In Every Coup De Foudre A Certain Willful Exaggeration Of The Qualities Of The Beloved, An Exaggeration Which Distracts Us From Our Habitual Pessimism And Focuses Our Energies On Someone In Whom We Can Believe In A Way We Have Never Believed In Ourselves?
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Lying
Believe
We Will Cease To Be Angry Once We Cease To Be So Hopeful.
Hopeful
Angry
Cease
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.
Beautiful
Appreciation
Pain
The Lesson? To Respond To The Unexpected And Hurtful Behavior Of Others With Something More Than A Wipe Of The Glasses, To See It As A Chance To Expand Our Understanding.
Glasses
Understanding
Hurtful
A Good Half Of The Art Of Living Is Resilience.
Art
Resilience
Half
Don't Despair: Despair Suggests You Are In Total Control And Know What Is Coming. You Don't - Surrender To Events With Hope.
Despair
Events
Surrender
We Tend To Believe In The Modern Secular World That If You Tell Someone Something Once, They'll Remember It. ... Religions Go, "nonsense. You Need To Keep Repeating The Lesson 10 Times A Day. So Get On Your Knees And Repeat It." That's What All Religions Tell Us: "get On Your Knees And Repeat It 10 Or 20 Or 15 Times A Day." Otherwise Our Minds Are Like Sieves.
Believe
Mind
Needs
...if The Beginnings Of Love And Amorous Politics Are Equally Rosy, Then The Ends May Be Equally Bloody.
Love
May
Ends
I Learnt To Stop Fantasising About The Perfect Job Or The Perfect Relationship Because That Can Actually Be An Excuse For Not Living.
Jobs
Perfect
Excuse
Sweetness Is The Opposite Of Machismo, Which Is Everywhere-and I Really Don't Get On With Machismo. I'm Interested In Sensitivity, And Weakness, And Fear, And Anxiety, Because I Think That, At The End Of The Day, Behind Our Masks, That's What We Are.
Thinking
Opposites
Anxiety
The Real Issue Is Not Whether Baking Biscuits Is Meaningful, But The Extent To Which The Activity Can Seem To Be So After It Has Been Continuously Stretched And Subdivided Across Five Thousand Lives.
Meaningful
Real
Issues
The Fear Of Saying Something Stupid (which Stupid People Never Have) Has Censored Far More Good Ideas Than Bad Ones.
Stupid
Ideas
People
Rather Than Employing It As A Supplement To Active, Conscious Seeing, They Used The Medium As A Substitute, Paying Less Attention To The World Than They Had Done Previously, Taking It On Faith That Photography Automatically Assured Them Possession Of It.
Photography
Attention
Done
We Should Not Feel Embarrassed By Our Difficulties, Only By Our Failure To Grow Anything Beautiful From Them.
Beautiful
Should
Embarrassed
[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.
Assessment
Differences
Way
Paying Tax Should Be Framed As A Glorious Civic Duty Worthy Of Gratitude - Not A Punishment For Making Money.
Gratitude
Punishment
Paying Taxes
According To Montaigne, It Was The Oppressive Notion That We Had Complete Mental Control Over Our Bodies, And The Horror Of Departing From This Portrait Of Normality, That Had Left The Man Unable To Perform Sexually.
Love
Men
Portraits
It's Perhaps Easier Now Than Ever Before To Make A Good Living; It's Perhaps Harder Than Ever Before To Stay Calm, To Be Free Of Career Anxiety.
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Inspiration
Careers
The More Closely We Analyze What We Consider 'sexy,' The More Clearly We Will Understand That Eroticism Is The Feeling Of Excitement We Experience At Finding Another Human Being Who Shares Our Values And Our Sense Of The Meaning Of Existence.
Sexy
Feelings
Excitement
Forcing People To Eat Together Is An Effective Way To Promote Tolerance.
Food
People
Tolerance
There Is A Longing For A Return To A Time Without The Need For Choices, Free Of The Regret At The Inevitable Loss That All Choice (however Wonderful) Has Entailed.
Regret
Loss
Choices
He Was A Volatile Mixture Of Confidence And Vulnerability. He Could Deliver Extended Monologues On Professional Matters, Then Promptly Stop In His Tracks To Peer Inquisitively Into His Guest's Eyes For Signs Of Boredom Or Mockery, Being Intelligent Enough To Be Unable Fully To Believe In His Own Claims To Significance. He Might, In A Past Life, Have Been A Particularly Canny And Sharp-tongued Royal Advisor.
Believe
Eye
Intelligent
One Kind Of Good Book Should Leave You Asking: How Did The Author Know That About Me?
Book
Asking
Kind
Only By Declaring A Book Completely Finished Can One Start To See How Much Remains To Be Done On It.
Book
Done
Remains
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.
Space
Community
Atmosphere
It's As Though Either You Accept [religious] Doctrine And Then You Can Have All The Nice Stuff, Or You Reject The Doctrine And You're Living In Some Kind Of Spiritual Wasteland Under The Guidance Of Cnn And Walmart.
God
Spiritual
Religious
Reputation Matters So Much Only Because People So Seldom Think For Themselves.
Thinking
People
Matter
A Simple Problem Of Arithmetic: There Are Far More Ambitions Than There Are Grand Destinies Available.
Ambition
Simple
Destiny
To One's Enemies: "i Hate Myself More Than You Ever Could.
Hate
Enemy
Self Loathing
We Don't Exist Unless There Is Someone Who Can See Us Existing, What We Say Has No Meaning Until Someone Can Understand, While To Be Surrounded By Friends Is Constantly To Have Our Identity Confirmed; Their Knowledge And Care For Us Have The Power To Pull Us From Our Numbness. In Small Comments, Many Of Them Teasing, They Reveal They Know Our Foibles And Except Them And So, In Turn, Accept That We Have A Place In The World.
Numbness
Identity
World
We Often Lose Our Tempers Not With Those Who Are Actually To Blame; Just With Those Who Love Us Enough To Forgive Us Our Foul Moods.
Forgiving
Blame
Mood
Our Bodies Hold Our Minds Hostage To Their Whims And Rhythms.
Mind
Body
Whim
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.
Life
Dust
Space
People Who Go On To Be Writers Are Those Who Can Forgive Themselves The Horror Of The First Draft.
People
Forgiving
Goes On
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.
Country
Prayer
Airports
In A Secularising World, Art Has Replaced Religion As A Touchstone Of Our Reverence And Devotion.
Art
World
Devotion
You Need A Long Hard Day's Work To Reveal The Logic Of The Craving For Very Bad Tv And Alcohol.
Long
Alcohol
Needs
The Assumption Is That Life Doesn't Need To Be Navigated With Lessons. You Can Just Do It Intuitively. After All, You Only Need To Achieve Autonomy From Your Parents, Find A Moderately Satisfying Job, Form A Relationship, Perhaps Raise Some Children, Watch The Onset Of Mortality In Your Parents' Generation And Eventually In Your Own, Until One Day A Fatal Illness Starts Gnawing At Your Innards And You Calmly Go To The Grave, Shut The Coffin And Are Done With The Self-evident Business Of Life.
Jobs
Children
Self
As Victims Of Hurt, We Frequently Don't Bring Up What Ails Us, Because So Many Wounds Look Absurd In The Light Of Day.
Hurt
Light
Looks
Her Lie Was Symptomatic Of A Certain Pride She Took In Mocking The Romantic, In Being Unsentimental, Matter-of-fact, Stoic; Yet At Heart She Was The Oppo Site: Idealistic, Dreamy, Giving, And Deeply Attached To Everything She Liked Verbally To Dismiss As "mushy.
Lying
Heart
Pride
Perhaps The Easiest People To Fall In Love With Are Those About Whom We Know Nothing. Romances Are Never As Pure As Those We Imagine During Long Train Journeys, As We Secretly Contemplate A Beautiful Person Who Is Gazing Out Of The Window – A Perfect Love Story Interrupted Only When The Beloved Looks Back Into The Carriage And Starts Up A Dull Conversation About The Excessive Price Of The On-board Sandwiches With A Neighbour Or Blows Her Nose Aggressively Into A Handkerchief.
Beautiful
Falling In Love
Journey
So Many Complaints Boil Down To The Belly Ache Of The Fragile, Mortal, Ignored Ego In A Vast And Indifferent Universe.
Ego
Ignored
Ache
We Each Appear To Hold Within Ourselves A Range Of Divergent Views As To Our Native Qualities.. And Amid Such Uncertainty, We Typically Turn To The Wider World To Settle The Question Of Our Significance.. We Seem Beholden To Affections Of Others To Endure Ourselves.
Views
Quality
Divergent
I Never Wavered In My Certainty That God Did Not Exist. I Was Simply Liberated By The Thought That There Might Be A Way To Engage With Religion Without Having To Subscribe To Its Supernatural Content - A Way, To Put It In More Abstract Terms, To Think About Fathers Without Upsetting My Respectful Memory Of My Own Father. I Recognized That My Continuing Resistance To Theories Of An Afterlife Or Of Heavenly Residents Was No Justification For Giving Up On The Music, Buildings, Prayers, Rituals, Feasts, Shrines, Pilgrimages, Communal Meals And Illustrated Manuscripts Of The Faiths.
Atheist
Giving Up
Memories
Happiness Is Impossible For Longer Than 15 Minutes. We Are The Descendants Of Creatures Who, Above All Else, Worried.
Impossible
Worried
Minutes
To Look At The Paper Is To Raise A Seashell To One's Ear And To Be Overwhelmed By The Roar Of Humanity.
Humanity
Looks
Ears
The Longing For A Destiny Is No Nowhere Stronger Than In Our Romantic Life. All Too Often Forced To Share Our Bed With Those Who Cannot Fathom Our Soul, Can We Not Be Forgiven If We Believe Ourselves Fated To Stumble One Day Upon The Man Or Woman Of Our Dreams.
Dream
Believe
Destiny
We Wanted To Test Each Other's Capacity For Survival: Only If We Had Tried In Vain To Destroy One Another Would We Know We Were Safe.
Survival
Safe
Tests
There Are Things That Are Not Spoken About In Polite Society. Very Quickly In Most Conversations You'll Reach A Moment Where Someone Goes, 'oh, That's A Bit Heavy,' Or 'eew, Disgusting.' And Literature Is A Place Where That Stuff Goes; Where People Whisper To Each Other Across Books, The Writer To The Reader. I Think That Stops You Feeling Lonely – In The Deeper Sense, Lonely.
Lonely
Book
Thinking
Rather Than Teasing The Buyers, We May Blame The Society In Which They Lived For Setting Up A Situation Where The Purchase Of Ornate Cabinets Felt Psychologically Necessary And Rewarding, Where Respect Was Dependent On Baroque Displays. Rather Than A Tale Of Greed, The History Of Luxury Could More Accurately Be Read As A Record Of Emotional Trauma. It Is The Legacy Of Those Who Have Felt Pressured By The Disdain Of Others To Add An Extraordinary Amount To Their Bare Selves In Order To Signal That They Too May Lay A Claim To Love.
Emotional
Luxury
Self
Good Sex Isn't Just Fun, It Keeps Us Sane And Happy. Having Sex With Someone Makes Us Feel Wanted, Alive And Potent.
Happiness
Sex
Fun
In Reality, The Likelihood Of Reaching The Pinnacle Of Capitalist Society Today Is Only Marginally Better Than Were The Chances Of Being Accepted Into The French Nobility Four Centuries Ago, Though At Least An Aristocratic Age Was Franker, And Therefore Kinder, About The Odds. It Did Not Relentlessly Play Up The Possibilities Open To All, And So, In Turn, Did Not Cruelly Equate An Ordinary Life With A Failed One.
Reality
Odds
Play
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.
Smell
People
Ignored
It Looks Like It’s Wasting Time, But Literature Is Actually The Ultimate Time-saver - Because It Gives Us Access To A Range Of Emotions And Events That It Would Take You Years, Decades, Millennia To Try To Experience Directly. Literature Is The Greatest Reality Simulator - A Machine That Puts You Through Infinitely More Situations Than You Can Ever Directly Witness.
Reality
Years
Giving
Mental Health: Having Enough Safe Places In Your Mind For Your Thoughts To Settle.
Mind
Safe
Mental Health
What Am I Supposed To Do Here? What Am I Supposed To Think?
Thinking
We Don't Really Learn Anything Properly Until There Is A Problem, Until We Are In Pain, Until Something Fails To Go As We Had Hoped ... We Suffer, Therefore We Think.
Pain
Thinking
Suffering
Most Of Us Stand Poised At The Edge Of Brilliance, Haunted By The Knowledge Of Our Proximity, Yet Still Demonstrably On The Wrong Side Of The Line, Our Dealings With Reality Undermined By A Range Of Minor Yet Critical Psychological Flaws (a Little Too Much Optimism, An Unprocessed Rebelliousness, A Fatal Impatience Or Sentimentality). We Are Like An Exquisite High-speed Aircraft Which For Lack Of A Tiny Part Is Left Stranded Beside The Runway, Rendered Slower Than A Tractor Or Bicycle.
Reality
Optimism
Lines
Status Anxiety Definitely Exists At A Political Level. Many Iraqis Were Annoyed With The Us Essentially For Reasons Of Status: For Not Showing Them Respect, For Humiliating Them.
Annoyed
Anxiety
Political
Every Realistic Picture Represents A Choice As To Which Features Of Reality Should Be Given Prominence; No Painting Ever Captures The Whole.
Reality
Choices
Painting
People Who Readily Accept The Need For A Gym Will Resist That Their Personalities Might Need Some Work Too.
People
Personality
Needs
It Seems The Only Way To Write A Half Decent Book Is To Worry Oneself Sick On An Hourly Basis That One Is Producing A Complete Disaster.
Book
Writing
Sick
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.
Ordinary
Example
Purpose
Everyone Returns Us To A Different Sense Of Ourselves, For We Become A Little Of Who They Think We Are.
Thinking
Return
Different
One Rarely Falls In Love Without Being As Much Attracted To What Is Interestingly Wrong With Someone As What Is Objectively Healthy.
Falling In Love
Health
Fall
Newspapers Are Being Read All Around. The Point Is Not, Of Course, To Glean New Information, But Rather To Coax The Mind Out Of Its Sleep-induced Introspective Temper.
Sleep
Mind
Information
A Successful Work Will Draw Out The Features Capable Of Exciting A Sense Of Beauty And Interest In The Spectator.
Successful
Exciting
Interest
I Think People Want To Get Married To End Their Emotional Uncertainty. In A Way, They Want To End Powerful Feelings, Or Certainly The Negative Ones.
Powerful
Emotional
Thinking
He Was Marked Out By His Relentless Ability To Find Fault With Others' Mediocrity - Suggesting That A Certain Type Of Intelligence May Be At Heart Nothing More Or Less Than A Superior Capacity For Dissatisfaction.
Heart
Mediocrity
May
Happiness May Be Difficult To Obtain. The Obstacles Are Not Primarily Financial.
May
Obstacles
Financial
We Study Biology, Physics, Movements Of Glaciers... Where Are The Classes On Envy, Feeling Wronged, Despair, Bitterness.
Class
Envy
Feelings
True Respectability Stems Not From The Will Of The Majority But From Proper Reasoning.
Majority
Stem
Reasoning
Responsible For Wrapping The Iron Fist Of Authority In Its Velvet Glove Is Jane Axtell, Head Of The Accountancy Firm's Human Resources Department.
Iron
Velvet
Gloves
What Should Worry Us Is Not The Number Of People That Oppose Us, But How Good Their Reasons Are For Doing So.
Numbers
People
Worry
Much Of The Really Serious Trouble In The World Gets Going With A Sense Of Humiliation.
World
Serious
Trouble
Maturity: Knowing Where You're Crazy, Trying To Warn Others Of The Fact And Striving To Keep Yourself Under Control.
Crazy
Maturity
Knowing
The Problem Isn't So Much Finding Good Ideas (there Is No Shortage) As Embedding The Ones We Have Into Everyday Practice.
Practice
Ideas
Everyday
As An Atheist, I Think There Are Lots Of Things Religions Get Up To Which Are Of Value To Non-believers - And One Of Those Things Is Trying To Be A Bit Better Than We Normally Manage To Be.
Atheist
Thinking
Trying
We Should Read Other People's Books In Order To Learn What We Feel; It Is Our Own Thoughts We Should Be Developing, Even If It Is Another Writer's Thought That Help Us To Do So.
Book
Order
People
Life Seems To Be A Process Of Replacing One Anxiety With Another And Substituting One Desire For Another--which Is Not To Say That We Should Never Strive To Overcome Any Of Our Anxieties Or Fulfil Any Of Our Desires, But Rather To Suggest That We Should Perhaps Build Into Our Strivings An Awareness Of The Way Our Goals Promise Us A Respite And A Resolution That They Cannot, By Definition, Deliver.
Goal
Anxiety
Promise
In Britain, Because I Live Here, I Can Also Run Into Problems Of Envy And Competition. But All This Is Just In A Day's Work For A Writer. You Can't Put Stuff Out There Without Someone Calling You A Complete Fool. Oh, Well.
Running
Writing
Envy
Life Gives Us No Such Handy Markers - A Storm Comes, And Far From This Being A Harbinger Of Death And Collapse, During Its Course A Person Discovers Love And Truth, Beauty And Happiness, The Rain Lashing At The Windows All The While.
Rain
Giving
Storm
The Degree Of Sympathy We Feel Regarding Another's Fiasco Is Directly Proportional To How Easy Or Difficult It Is For Us To Imagine Ourselves, Under Like Circumstances, Making A Similar Mistake.
Mistake
Degrees
Imagine
Our Responses To The World Are Crucially Moulded By The Company We Keep, For We Temper Our Curiosity To Fit In With The Expectations Of Others.
Friendship
Travel
Company We Keep
Despite Its Maddeningly Vague, Inarticulate Form, Anxiety Is Almost Always Trying To Tell You Something Useful And Apposite.
Always Trying
Anxiety
Form
I Was Uncomfortable Writing Fiction. My Love Was The Personal Essay Rather Than The Novel.
Writing
Fiction
Uncomfortable
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