A Quote by Alain de Botton

Unnatural to expect that learning to be happy should be any easier than, say, learning to play the violin or require any less practice. — © Alain de Botton
Unnatural to expect that learning to be happy should be any easier than, say, learning to play the violin or require any less practice.
The only thing I can say that is not bullshit is that you do have to learn to write in a way that you would learn to play the violin. Everybody seems to think that you should be able to turn on the faucet one day and out will come the novel. I think for most people it's just practice, practice, practice, that sense of just learning your instrument until - when you have an idea on the violin, you don't have to translate it into violin-speak anymore - the language is your own. It's not something you can think your way into, or outsmart. you've just got to do it.
Learning to play golf is like learning to play the violin. It's not only difficult to do, it's very painful to everyone around you.
I've enjoyed learning, I'm still learning, and I'll always be learning like any coach or any player. It's important you are still open to learning.
For is there any practice less selfish, any labor less alienated, any time less wasted, than preparing something delicious and nourishing for people you love?
I'm still learning. It's all a learning curve. Every time you sit down, with any given episode of any given show, it is a learning curve. You're learning something new about how to tell a story. But then, I've felt that way about everything I've ever done - television, features or whatever. Directing or writing, it always feels like the first day of school to me.
The military doesn't teach rifle marksmanship. It teaches equipment familiarity. Despite what the officer corps thinks, learning to shoot a rifle is not like learning to drive a car. Instead, it is like learning to play the violin.... The equipment familiarity learning curve comes up quick, but then the rifle marksmanship continuation of the curve rises very slowly....by shooting one careful shot at a time, carefully inspecting the result (and the cause).
No art or learning is to be pursued halfheartedly...and any art worth learning will certainly reward more or less generously the effort made to study it.
The first object of any act of learning, over and beyond the pleasure it may give, is that it should serve us in the future. Learning should not only take us somewhere; it should allow us later to go further more easily.
Surely comics require more effort on the part of the reader than movies or television. I'm always learning new things you can do with comics that wouldn't work in any other medium, and often they require the need to process a lot of dense information. Of course, the trick is to make the complicated seem effortless and spontaneous.
For one movie, I'm learning to play a violin, and I had never picked up a violin in my life. That's a big challenge. That's what I see as one of the advantages of this business. You get to do things you'd never do, in a normal lifestyle.
Learning astrology is like learning any foreign language. You already have the ideas, concepts, and experiences of your life within you; you are just learning a new language for what you are already experiencing.
What is difficult about learning - any kind of learning - is that you have to give up what you know already to make room for the new ideas. Children are much better at it than grownups.
The thing about being autistic is that you gradually get less and less autistic, because you keep learning, you keep learning how to behave. It's like being in a play; I'm always in a play.
Is there any practice less selfish, any time less wasted than preparing something nourishing and delicious for the people you love?
Now, we are still learning how to approach girls, you know, learning what to say, etc., because the practice we've had was with our other girl, the cello. If you noticed, it has the shape of a female.
Whence it is somewhat strange that any men from so mean and silly a practice should expect commendation, or that any should afford regard thereto; the which it is so far from meriting, that indeed contempt and abhorrence are due to it.
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