Frases de Alain de Botton

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“Proust dijo en cierta ocasión que a las mujeres de belleza clásica había que dejarlas para los hombres sin imaginación, y”

“Uno de los principales inconvenientes del amor, al menos durante un tiempo, es que corre el riesgo de hacernos felices.”

“enojo poco después de recibir una ofensa es la cosa más generosa que uno puede hacer, pues le ahorra al ofensor el florecimiento de la culpa y la necesidad de hacer bajar al ofendido de su torre almenada. Como”

“El clímax lógico del amor inmaduro [por ser absoluto] se alcanza en la muerte, real o simbólica, el clímax lógico del amor maduro se alcanza en el matrimonio y la tentativa de evitar la muerte a través de la rutina [los suplementos dominicales, las prensas para pantalones, los electrodomésticos manejados por control remoto]. Pues el amor inmaduro no acepta ningún compromiso, y en cuanto dejamos de aceptar compromisos, ponemos rumbo hacia la muerte. Para alguien que ha conocido las cimas de la pasión inmadura, aceptar el matrimonio es un precio insostenible: más le valdría poner fin a la farsa despeñándose en coche desde un acantilado.”

“Preferible por muchos conceptos, la filosofía del amor maduro se caracteriza por una conciencia activa del bien y del mal dentro de cada persona: la templanza la preside, se resiste a la idealización, está libre de celos, masoquismo y obsesiones, es una forma de amistad que incluye una dimensión sexual, es agradable, pacífica y correspondida [y tal vez explique por qué la mayoría de quienes han conocido el deseo denegarían a su manifestación indolora el calificativo de amor]. Por”

“Intuition is unconscious accumulated experience informing judgement in real time.”

“We will cease to be angry once we cease to be so hopeful.”

“The greatest obstacle to living a meaningful life is the sense that one has plenty of time left.”

“I think where people tend to end up results from a combination of encouragement, accident, and lucky break, etc. etc. Like many others, my career happened like it did because certain doors opened and certain doors closed.”

“We should not feel embarrassed by our difficulties, only by our failure to grow anything beautiful from them.”

“So it’s all about trying to find the best fit between your talents and what the world can offer at that point in time.”

“One of the best protections against disappointment is to have a lot going on.”

“We are all more intelligent than we are capable, and awareness of the insanity of love has never saved anyone from the disease.”

“There is no such thing as work-life balance. Everything worth fighting for unbalances your life.”

“Not being understood may be taken as a sign that there is much in one to understand.”

“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.”

“People only get really interesting when they start to rattle the bars of their cages.”

“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.”

“A good half of the art of living is resilience.”

“The largest part of what we call 'personality' is determined by how we've opted to defend ourselves against anxiety and sadness".”

“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.”

“The difference between hope and despair is a different way of telling stories from the same facts.”

“Feeling lost, crazy and desperate belongs to a good life as much as optimism, certainty and reason.”

“The only people we can think of as normal are those we don't yet know very well.”

“Must being in love always mean being in pain?”

“Bitterness: anger that forgot where it came from.”

“Don't despair: despair suggests you are in total control and know what is coming. You don't - surrender to events with hope.”

“The most attractive are not those who allow us to kiss them at once [we soon feel ungrateful] or those who never allow us to kiss them [we soon forget them], but those who coyly lead us between the two extremes.”

“A dominant impulse on encountering beauty is to wish to hold on to it, to possess it and give it weight in one’s life. There is an urge to say, ‘I was here, I saw this and it mattered to me.”

“One's doing well if age improves even slightly one's capacity to hold on to that vital truism: "This too shall pass.”

“There may be significant things to learn about people by looking at what annoys them most.”

“To be shown love is to feel ourselves the object of concern: our presence is noted, our name is registered, our views are listened to, our failings are treated with indulgence and our needs are ministered to. And under such care, we flourish.”

“Anxiety is the handmaiden of contemporary ambition.”

“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.”