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The School of Life

2 years

We run an online psychotherapy service staffed by a team of exceptional therapists - who are ready to listen to you right now. Click here for more:

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The School of Life

@TheSchoolOfLife

2 years

In mid-September 1888, a penniless Dutchman, who would in a few months be committed to an asylum and be dead within two years, sat down in the eastern corner of the Place du Forum in Arles and set to work on one of the most astonishing and beloved paintings ever made. A thread

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The School of Life

@TheSchoolOfLife

9 years

“Artists are people driven by the tension between the desire to communicate and the desire to hide.” ― Donald Woods Winnicott

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The School of Life

@TheSchoolOfLife

7 years

Remember to vote today! #Vote2017

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The School of Life

@TheSchoolOfLife

1 year

What makes someone a ‘good’ parent? Though each of us will have particular strengths and weaknesses as parents, the answer is simpler – and more definitive – than we generally assume. Here is a 14 point guide to being a good parent (🧵)

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The School of Life

@TheSchoolOfLife

1 year

Perfect Japanese word: Komorebi - to describe the dance of sunlight filtered through tree leaves. (Words may not create feelings but they certainly help us to notice them...).

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The School of Life

@TheSchoolOfLife

2 years

There are few beliefs more pernicious than the idea that to be single is to be lonely — and that a partner represents the end of loneliness. We are never more alone than when we commit ourselves to someone who’s wrong for us.

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The School of Life

@TheSchoolOfLife

2 years

One of Friedrich Nietzsche’s strangest and most important commandments is that we should all ‘Amor Fati’ — ‘love our fate’. What did he mean? And how does Nietzsche’s own unhappy fate shed light on what he had in mind? A thread:

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The School of Life

@TheSchoolOfLife

6 years

"Rules for happiness: something to do, someone to love, something to hope for." - Immanuel Kant

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The School of Life

@TheSchoolOfLife

1 year

We rightly recognise friendship as one of the highest goods. Friends are a vital source of light, laughter and joy in our lives. But friendship also serves a more basic and perhaps less optimistic function. To put it bluntly, we need friends to stop us from going mad. A thread.

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The School of Life

@TheSchoolOfLife

2 years

An epidemic of loneliness has been generated by the misguided idea that the only alternative to feeling alone is to be in a romantic relationship.

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The School of Life

@TheSchoolOfLife

7 years

"Excellence is never an accident. It is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, and intelligent execution; it represents the wise choice of many alternatives - choice, not chance, determines your destiny." - Aristotle

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The School of Life

@TheSchoolOfLife

7 years

"To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

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The School of Life

@TheSchoolOfLife

1 year

One of the sadder symptoms of not having been treated well in childhood is a remarkable tolerance – perhaps even an appetite – for not being treated well by partners in adulthood. Why does this happen? And can the pattern be broken? A thread.

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The School of Life

@TheSchoolOfLife

6 years

“The man who asks a question is a fool for a minute, the man who does not ask is a fool for life.” - Confucius

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The School of Life

@TheSchoolOfLife

2 years

We can spend a lot of time wondering whether or not we should be with a given person. But to cut through our doubts efficiently, we might consider our responses to 7 very short statements designed to highlight the extent of two people’s compatibility.

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The School of Life

@TheSchoolOfLife

2 years

Definition of a present: something you can’t get for yourself. As a child, that meant toys. In adulthood: reassurance, sympathy, forgiveness. (Dada Adesoji Disu, The Hug, 2017)

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The School of Life

@TheSchoolOfLife

2 years

In 1958, Mark Rothko was offered $35,000 to decorate a fashionable New York restaurant. In response, he created some of the darkest, most dismal paintings in existence. Why? And why, for all their bleakness, do the paintings still resonate with so many of us today? A thread.

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The School of Life

@TheSchoolOfLife

2 years

So many of life's problems would be softened if we had three or four exceptional friends living within a two minute radius. (Paul Cezanne, The Card Players, 1894-5)

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The School of Life

@TheSchoolOfLife

6 years

"To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

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The School of Life

@TheSchoolOfLife

2 years

The true test of moral character: how we treat people who can do nothing for us.

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The School of Life

@TheSchoolOfLife

6 years

"Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility." - Sigmund Freud

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The School of Life

@TheSchoolOfLife

6 years

Why Psychotherapy Works: "One good relationship becomes the model for relationships. The therapist’s moderate, intelligent voice becomes part of our own inner dialogue. We are cured through continuous, repeated exposure to sanity and kindness." Read more:

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The School of Life

@TheSchoolOfLife

7 years

"If anyone tells you that a certain person speaks ill of you, do not make excuses about what is said of you but answer, ‘He was ignorant of my other faults, else he would have not mentioned these alone.'" – Epictetus

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The School of Life

@TheSchoolOfLife

2 years

The moment babies are born, their minds are dominated by a powerful implicit question: What do I need to do in order to be loved? A thread...

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The School of Life

@TheSchoolOfLife

7 years

"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." - Aristotle

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The School of Life

@TheSchoolOfLife

7 years

‘Genius is childhood recalled at will.’ - Baudelaire

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The School of Life

@TheSchoolOfLife

1 year

We worry about a lot of things – the mortgage, dentist appointments, performance reviews… But as our pre-modern ancestors knew, there is only ever one thing to be worried about…and conversely, doing so might be the key to finally liberating ourselves from fear. A thread. 💀

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The School of Life

@TheSchoolOfLife

1 year

For paranoia about 'what other people think': remember that only some hate, a very few love - and almost all just don't care. (René Magritte, Golconda, 1953)

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The School of Life

@TheSchoolOfLife

8 years

'Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.' - Voltaire

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The School of Life

@TheSchoolOfLife

6 years

"It is utterly false and cruelly arbitrary to put all the play and learning into childhood, all the work into middle age, and all the regrets into old age." - Margaret Mead

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The School of Life

@TheSchoolOfLife

2 years

Most of our childhood is stored not in photos, but in certain biscuits, lights of day, smells, textures of carpet.

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The School of Life

@TheSchoolOfLife

2 years

We mostly lose our tempers not with those who are actually to blame, but with those who love us enough to forgive us our foul moods. (Amadeo Modigliani, Christina, 1916)

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The School of Life

@TheSchoolOfLife

9 years

'Never believe that a few caring people can't change the world. For, indeed, that's all who ever have.' - Margaret Mead

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The School of Life

@TheSchoolOfLife

7 years

'The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new lands but seeing with new eyes.' - Marcel Proust

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The School of Life

@TheSchoolOfLife

7 years

'Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.' - Epicurus

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The School of Life

@TheSchoolOfLife

7 years

"Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility." - Sigmund Freud

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The School of Life

@TheSchoolOfLife

7 years

"Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live." - Flaubert

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The School of Life

@TheSchoolOfLife

2 years

The world generally has a very low view of doing nothing other than spend the day staring out of the window. It's wrong - and here's why. A 🧵

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The School of Life

@TheSchoolOfLife

7 years

"Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage." - Lao Tzu

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The School of Life

@TheSchoolOfLife

1 year

One of the most infamous opening lines in poetry also happens to be among the most psychologically acute statements ever uttered – from Philip Larkin’s ‘This Be The Verse.’ ‘They fuck you up, your mum and dad.’ Here’s how Larkin came to write it – and why it matters. A thread.

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The School of Life

@TheSchoolOfLife

7 years

'In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act.' - George Orwell

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The School of Life

@TheSchoolOfLife

2 years

We mostly lose our tempers not with those who are actually to blame, but with those who love us enough to forgive us our foul moods.

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The School of Life

@TheSchoolOfLife

2 years

The kindest most pleasant people are those who easily, and without pride, quickly imagine they might be in the wrong.

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The School of Life

@TheSchoolOfLife

7 years

"Forever is composed of nows." - Emily Dickinson

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@TheSchoolOfLife

2 years

Maturity: the confidence to have no opinions on many things. (Rembrandt van Rijn, Self-portrait as Zeuxis Laughing, 1663)

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The School of Life

@TheSchoolOfLife

7 years

"We are shaped by our thoughts; we become what we think. When the mind is pure, joy follows like a shadow that never leaves." - Buddha

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The School of Life

@TheSchoolOfLife

6 years

"Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom." - Marcel Proust

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The School of Life

@TheSchoolOfLife

2 years

On December 22nd, 1849, the Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky was handcuffed, blindfolded, and taken by soldiers to a public square, where he was due to be tied to a stake and executed by firing squad. This is a thread about why — and what happened next…

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The School of Life

@TheSchoolOfLife

2 years

Why do abused children so often end up hating themselves - rather than their abusers? A thread.

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The School of Life

@TheSchoolOfLife

1 year

When he was 15 years old, Pablo Picasso painted the picture on the left. When he was 76, he painted the one on the right. His journey as an artist has a lot to teach us about what ‘maturity’ – both artistic and emotional – really looks like. A thread.

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The School of Life

@TheSchoolOfLife

7 years

Compatibility is not the precondition of love. It is the achievement of love. Learn more:

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The School of Life

@TheSchoolOfLife

3 years

Anxiety is not always a sign of sickness, a weakness of the mind or an error to which we should locate a medical solution. It is mostly a hugely reasonable and sensitive response to the genuine strangeness, terror, uncertainty and riskiness of existence.

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The School of Life

@TheSchoolOfLife

6 years

"A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving." - Lao Tzu

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The School of Life

@TheSchoolOfLife

7 years

"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident." - Schopenhauer

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The School of Life

@TheSchoolOfLife

3 years

Everyone wants a better life: very few of us want to be better people.

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The School of Life

@TheSchoolOfLife

2 years

The novels of Charles Dickens — author of A Christmas Carol (1843) — are still delighting readers today, particularly at this time of year. But Dickens spent most of his life hiding a terrible secret — one that helps to shed light on his peculiar genius. A thread.

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The School of Life

@TheSchoolOfLife

2 years

So many of life's problems would be softened if we had three or four exceptional friends living within a two minute radius.

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The School of Life

@TheSchoolOfLife

2 years

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The School of Life

@TheSchoolOfLife

2 years

No one gets through this life without making dramatic errors. By committing some, we’re not proving our wayward nature, we’re confirming our membership of the human race.

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The School of Life

@TheSchoolOfLife

1 year

We hear so much about the loneliness we feel without others; but far too little about the loneliness we have to suffer with the wrong sorts of people. (Edgar Degas, Absinthe, 1876)

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The School of Life

@TheSchoolOfLife

2 years

We should stop expecting people to be anything other than very flawed. Whomever we got to know would be radically imperfect in a host of deeply serious ways. There can only ever be ‘good enough’ relationships with others.

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The School of Life

@TheSchoolOfLife

7 years

"I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do." - Da Vinci

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The School of Life

@TheSchoolOfLife

2 years

Most of what makes a book 'good' is that we're reading it at the right moment for us.

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The School of Life

@TheSchoolOfLife

6 years

"Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared." - Buddha

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The School of Life

@TheSchoolOfLife

7 years

'You cannot find peace by avoiding life.' - Virginia Woolf

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2 years

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The School of Life

@TheSchoolOfLife

8 years

'Wealth is the ability to fully experience life.' - Henry David Thoreau

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The School of Life

@TheSchoolOfLife

2 years

Everyone wants a better life: very few of us want to be better people.

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The School of Life

@TheSchoolOfLife

1 year

The secret to overcoming anxiety is much simpler – and cheaper – than we often suppose. It consists of regularly setting aside a window of time to ask: what am I worried about right now? Here are some instructions for an anxiety-reducing interview with ourselves. (🧵)

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The School of Life

@TheSchoolOfLife

7 years

'You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.' - Plato

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@TheSchoolOfLife

2 years

The essence of maturity: we gradually learn to stop exaggerating.

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The School of Life

@TheSchoolOfLife

7 years

"The reason why so few persons are agreeable in conversation is that each thinks more of what he desires to say, than of what the others say, and that we make bad listeners when we want to speak." - Francois de La Rochefoucauld

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The School of Life

@TheSchoolOfLife

7 years

"Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity." - Seneca

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The School of Life

@TheSchoolOfLife

2 years

Most of our childhood is stored not in photos, but in certain biscuits, lights of day, smells, textures of carpet.

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The School of Life

@TheSchoolOfLife

2 years

Among the Yoruba people, an ethnic group of some 52 million spread between Nigeria, Togo and Benin, one of the most flattering ways to describe a person is to say they have much ‘itutu.’ The word denotes a particular approach to life: unhurried, composed, assured and unflappable.

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The School of Life

@TheSchoolOfLife

2 years

The true test of moral character: how we treat people who can do nothing for us. (Robert Lenkiewicz, Cider Ryder in the Pram Factory, 1996)

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The School of Life

@TheSchoolOfLife

2 years

Anxiety is not always a sign of sickness, a weakness of the mind or an error to which we should locate a medical solution. It is mostly a hugely reasonable and sensitive response to the genuine strangeness, terror, uncertainty and riskiness of existence.

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The School of Life

@TheSchoolOfLife

7 years

'We confess our little faults to persuade people that we have no large ones.' - La Rochefoucauld

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The School of Life

@TheSchoolOfLife

2 years

Anxiety deserves greater dignity: It is not a sign of degeneracy. It is a justifiable expression of panic at our mysterious participation in a disordered, uncertain world.

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The School of Life

@TheSchoolOfLife

3 years

Adult life isn't an ongoing version of school: we don't need to keep doing what is unpleasant and unsuited to our nature just to please authority figures. There are no prizes at the end for those who simply endured.

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The School of Life

@TheSchoolOfLife

2 years

Anxiety is deeply normal.

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The School of Life

@TheSchoolOfLife

6 years

"The first thing you have to know is yourself. A man who knows himself can step outside himself and watch his own reactions like an observer." - Adam Smith

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2 years

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The School of Life

@TheSchoolOfLife

7 years

"We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light." - Plato

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The School of Life

@TheSchoolOfLife

2 years

122 years ago today, Oscar Wilde, one of the most celebrated and beloved writers of his day, died a convicted criminal and penniless exile in a run-down hotel room in Paris, aged just 46. This thread explains why — and what we can learn from his example.

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The School of Life

@TheSchoolOfLife

7 years

'Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.' – Søren Kierkegaard

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The School of Life

@TheSchoolOfLife

2 years

At The School of Life, we believe there are 26 signs of emotional maturity. To see how many you have mastered, and what you may have left to learn, head over to our link below:

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@TheSchoolOfLife

8 years

'In Individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs it is the rule.' - Friedrich Nietzsche

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The School of Life

@TheSchoolOfLife

2 years

An epidemic of loneliness has been generated by the misguided idea that the only alternative to feeling alone is to be in a romantic relationship.

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The School of Life

@TheSchoolOfLife

7 years

"When I am attacked by gloomy thoughts, nothing helps me so much as running to my books. They quickly absorb me and banish the clouds from my mind." - Michel de Montaigne

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The School of Life

@TheSchoolOfLife

1 year

What if being lonely were actually a sign of being an interesting, emotionally sincere and thoughtful person? What if, in a world of superficial alliances, lonely was just what a more serious person tended naturally and legitimately to be?

How to Know If You Have Real Friends (And What to Do If You Don't)

What if being lonely were actually a sign of being an interesting, emotionally sincere and thoughtful person? What if, in a world of superficial alliances, l...

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The School of Life

@TheSchoolOfLife

7 years

"There are always flowers for those who want to see them." - Henri Matisse

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The School of Life

@TheSchoolOfLife

1 year

What happens to a child who is not loved properly? The answer one might expect is that they start to hate the person who doesn’t give them the love they need. Far from it. The reality is that the child becomes consumed not with hate, but with shame. (🧵)

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The School of Life

@TheSchoolOfLife

2 years

The best judge of someone’s intent towards us can be discerned by how they leave us feeling about ourselves rather than what they overtly talk about. (Amrita Sher-Gil, Self-Portrait, 1930)