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.
Alain de BottonMaturity: knowing where you're crazy, trying to warn others of the fact and striving to keep yourself under control.
Alain de BottonThe more dignity is widely and freely available in a society, the less people want to be famous.
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 BottonDiffer 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.
Alain de Botton