Much of the really serious trouble in the world gets going with a sense of humiliation.
Alain de BottonA danger of travel is that we see things at the wrong time, before we have had a chance to build up the necessary receptivity and when new information is therefore as useless and fugitive as necklace beads without a connecting chain.
Alain de BottonAn argument in a couple: 2 people attempting to introduce each other to important truths - by panicked shouting.
Alain de BottonWe 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.
Alain de Botton