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“Cynics are merely idealists with unusually high standards.”
― Alain de Botton, The Course of Love

“I learned how much power over a situation you gain when you decide that you don't care what others think of you.”
― Brandon Sanderson, The Bands of Mourning

“It’s not just children who are childlike. Adults, too, are – beneath the bluster – intermittently playful, silly, fanciful, vulnerable, hysterical, terrified, and pitiful and in search of consolation and forgiveness.
We’re well versed at seeing the sweet and the fragile in children and offering them help and comfort accordingly. Around them, we know how to put aside the worst of our compulsions, vindictiveness and fury. We can recalibrate our expectations and demand a little less than we normally do; we’re slower to anger and a bit more aware of unrealised potential. We readily treat children with a degree of kindness that we are oddly and woefully reluctant to show to our peers.
It is a wonderful thing to live in a world where so many people are nice to children. It would be even better if we lived in one where we were a little nicer to the childlike sides of one another.”
― Alain de Botton, The Course of Love

“For me, finding hope is not some philosophical exercise or sentimental notion; it is a prerequisite for my survival.”
― John Green, The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet