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"What we seek, at the deepest level, is inwardly to resemble, rather than physically to possess, the objects and places that touch us through their beauty."
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"I thought the most beautiful thing in the world must be shadow."
"Maybe, beauty, true beauty, is so overwhelming, it goes straight to our hearts.maybe it makes us feel emotions that are locked away inside."
"I had a microscopic eye for the blemish, for the grain of ugliness which to me constituted the sole beauty of the object."
"A few flat clouds folded themselves like crepes over fillings of apricot sky. Pompadours of supper-time smoke billowed from chimneys, separating into girlish pigtails as the breeze combed them out, above the slate rooftops. Chestnut blossoms, weary from having been admired all day, wore faint smiles of anticipation."
"There is nothing more beautiful than the light of a Candle and the Aroma of it's Heart."
"But beauty, real beauty, ends where an intellectual expression begins. Intellect is in itself a mode of exaggeration, and destroys the harmony of any face."
"The eye is the jewel of the body."
"It seems to me that the pleasure one feels in a work of art is just one thing that one does not have to explain."
"Works of art are infinitely solitary and nothing is less likely to reach them than criticism. Only love can grasp them and hold them and do them justice."
"The cat . . . is for the man who appreciates beauty as the one living force in a blind and purposeless universe."
Explore more quotes by Alain de Botton
"Instead of bringing back 1600 plants, we might return from our journeys with a collection of small unfAated but life-enhancing thoughts."
"Curiosity takes ignorance seriously, and is confident enough to admit when it does not know. It is aware of not knowing, and it sets out to do something about it."
"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."
"Marriage: a hopeful, generous, infinitely kind gamble taken by two people who don't know yet who they are or who the other might be, binding themselves to a future they cannot conceive of and have carefully omitted to investigate."
"Though it may feel otherwise, enjoying life is no more dangerous than apprehending it with continuous anxiety and gloom."
"Being political doesn't only or principally mean caring what party wins the next election, to be political is to care about the happiness of strangers."
"The largest part of what we call 'personality' is determined by how we've opted to defend ourselves against anxiety and sadness"."
"We continue to need exhortations to be sympathetic and just, even if we do not believe that there is a God who has a hand in wishing to make us so. We no longer have to be brought into line by the threat of hell or the promise of paradise; we merely have to be reminded that it is we ourselves -- that is, the most mature and reasonable parts of us (seldom present in the midst of our crises and obsessions) -- who want to lead the sort of life which we once imagined supernatural beings demanded of us. An adequate evolution of morality from superstition to reason should mean recognizing ourselves as the authors of our own moral commandments."
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