Being put in our place by something larger, older, greater than ourselves is not a humiliation; it should be accepted as a relief from our insanely h… - Alain de Botton

"كان فعل الكتابة مدفوعًا بخيبة الأمل من المحيطين به، ولكنها كانت ممزوجة - مع ذلك - بالأمل بشأن أن يكون ثمة شخص آخر في مكان ما سيفهمه؛ كان كتابه موجهًا إلى الجميع وغير موجه إلى أحد بالتحديد. كان مدركًا لمفارقة التعبير عن أعماق ذاته للغرباء في المكتبات:
"أشياء كثيرة لم أكن مهتمًا بالبوح بها لأي شخص بذاته أصبحت أبوح بها للجميع، ولمن يود معرفة أشد أفكاري سرية، بدأت أحيل أعز أصدقائي إلى رف المكتبة.

The second hugely seductive move is to signal that we view the other person with a mixture of tenderness and realism. It’s often imagined that it’ll be seductive to convey an air of adoration, to hint that the other strikes us as exceptionally attractive or accomplished. But surprisingly, it is deeply worrying to be obviously adored, because everyone, from the inside, knows very well that they don’t deserve intense acclaim, are often disappointing and sometimes quite simply pitiful.
So seduction involves suggesting both that one likes the other person a lot – and yet can see their frailty quite clearly, that one cope with it and forgive it with gentle indulgence. One might, towards the end of the evening drop in a small warm tease that alludes to our understanding of some less than perfect side of them: ‘I suppose you stayed under the duvet feeling a bit sorry for yourself after that?’ we might ask, with a benign smile.
Such a gesture implies that we like another person not under a mistaken notion that they are flawless but with a full and unfrightened appreciation of their frailties. That ends up being powerfully seductive because it is, first and foremost, reassuring. It suggests the ideal way that we would like someone to view us within the testing conditions of a real relationship. We crave not admiration, but to be properly known and yet still liked and forgiven.

Every fall into love involves the triumph of hope over self-knowledge. We fall in love hoping we won't find in another what we know is in ourselves, all the cowardice, weakness, laziness, dishonesty, compromise, and stupidity. We throw a cordon of love around the chosen one and decide that everything within it will somehow be free of our faults. We locate inside another a perfection that eludes us within ourselves, and through our union with the beloved hope to maintain (against the evidence of all self-knowledge) a precarious faith in our species.