the truth
On Single Men by Alain de Botton
"There are no greater romantics than those who don't have anyone to be romantic with. It is when we are in the depths of loneliness, without the distraction of work or friends, that we are in a position to grasp the nature and neccessity of love. It is after a weekend in which the phone has not stirred, in which every meal was prised from a can and consumed in the unconsoling presence of a gravel-voiced BBC narrator - outlining the mating habits of the Kenyan antelope - that we can appreciate why Plato should have declared (The Symposium, 416 BC) that a man without love is like a creature with only half its limbs"
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"Women should be greatful for the despair of unattached men, for it is the foundation of future loyalty and selflessness - another reason, perhaps, to be suspicious of the romantically successful types, whose charms have left them unacquainted with the tragicomic process of aching for days for a woman they were too shy to address and who stepped off at the next station behind a carton of apple juice and plans for marriage."
"There are no greater romantics than those who don't have anyone to be romantic with. It is when we are in the depths of loneliness, without the distraction of work or friends, that we are in a position to grasp the nature and neccessity of love. It is after a weekend in which the phone has not stirred, in which every meal was prised from a can and consumed in the unconsoling presence of a gravel-voiced BBC narrator - outlining the mating habits of the Kenyan antelope - that we can appreciate why Plato should have declared (The Symposium, 416 BC) that a man without love is like a creature with only half its limbs"
***
"Women should be greatful for the despair of unattached men, for it is the foundation of future loyalty and selflessness - another reason, perhaps, to be suspicious of the romantically successful types, whose charms have left them unacquainted with the tragicomic process of aching for days for a woman they were too shy to address and who stepped off at the next station behind a carton of apple juice and plans for marriage."