Quote #2501 from On Love from Alain de Botton
Fri, 2010-03-05 08:37 — GabrielleHowever happy we may be with our partner, our love for them necessarily prevents us [unless with live in a polygamous society] from starting other romantic liaisons. But why should this constrain us if we truly loved them? Why should we feel this as a loss unless our love for them has already begun to wane? The answer perhaps lies in the uncomfortable thought that in resolving our need to love, we may not always succeed in resolving our need to long.
Quote #2197 from On seeing and noticing by Alain de Botton
Fri, 2009-04-17 05:49 — Gabrielle(...) It is not necessarily at home that we best encounter our true selves. The furniture insists that we cannot change because it does not; the domestic setting keeps us tethered to the person we are in ordinary life, but who may not be who we essentially are.
Quote #2196 from On seeing and noticing by Alain de Botton
Fri, 2009-04-17 05:48 — Gabrielle(...) I felt lonely but, for once, this was a gentle even pleasant kind of loneliness because, rather than unfolding against a backdrop of laughter and fellowship, in which I would suffer from a contrast between my mood and the enviroment, this loneliness unfolds in a place where everyone was a stranger, where the difficulties of communication and the frustrated longing for love seemed to be acknowledged and brutally celebrated by the architecture and lighting.
Quote #2195 from On seeing and noticing by Alain de Botton
Fri, 2009-04-17 05:44 — GabrielleIt may be easier to give way to sadness here than in a living room with wallpaper and framed photos. the decòr of a refuge that has let us down. (...) In a variety of underfined ways, home appears to have betrayed them, forcing them out into the night or on to the road. the twenty-four-hour diner, the station waiting room or motel are sanctuaries for those who have, for noble reasons, failed to find a home in the ordinary world.
Quote #2194 from On seeing and noticing by Alain de Botton
Fri, 2009-04-17 05:38 — GabrielleIt is perhaps sad books that console us most when we are sad, and the pictures of lonely service stations that we should hang on our walls when there is no one to hold or love.
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