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Never, ever become a writer. It's a nightmare.

Alain de Botton

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Alain de Botton
Age: 55
Born: 1969
Born: December 20
Journalist
Philosopher
Publisher
Writer
City of Zurich
Alain De Botton
Become
Ever
Never
Nightmare
Writer

More quotes by Alain de Botton

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The inability to live in the present lies in the fear of leaving the sheltered position of anticipation or memory, and so of admitting that this is the only life that one is ever likely (heavenly intervention aside) to live.
Alain de Botton
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I feel that the great challenge of our time is the communication of ideas.
Alain de Botton
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One of love's greatest drawbacks is that, for a while at least, it is in danger of making us happy.
Alain de Botton
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I am in general a very pessimistic person with an optimistic, day to day take on things. The bare facts of life are utterly terrifying. And yet, one can laugh. Indeed, one has to laugh precisely because of the darkness: the nervous laughter of the trenches.
Alain de Botton
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Distress at losing an object can be as much a frustration at the intellectual mystery of the disappearance as about the loss itself.
Alain de Botton
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Dreams reveal we never quite get 'over' anything: it's all still in there somewhere.
Alain de Botton
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As we write, so we build: to keep a record of what matters to us.
Alain de Botton
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Only as we mature does affection begin to depend on achievement.
Alain de Botton
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I'm also interested in the modern suggestion that you can have a combination of love and sex in a marriage - which no previous society has ever believed.
Alain de Botton
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Much of the really serious trouble in the world gets going with a sense of humiliation.
Alain de Botton
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Getting to the top has an unfortunate tendency to persuade people that the system is OK after all.
Alain de Botton
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A great writer picks up on those things that matter. It’s almost like their radar is attuned to the most significant moments.
Alain de Botton
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Art cannot single-handedly create enthusiasm... it merely contributes to enthusiasm and guides us to be more conscious of feelings that we might previously have experienced only tentatively or hurriedly.
Alain de Botton
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Not being understood may be taken as a sign that there is much in one to understand.
Alain de Botton
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It's perhaps easier now than ever before to make a good living it's perhaps harder than ever before to stay calm, to be free of career anxiety.
Alain de Botton
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Forgiveness requires a sense that bad behaviour is a sign of suffering rather than malice.
Alain de Botton
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Socrates, on being insulted in the marketplace, asked by a passerby, Don't you worry about being called names? retorted, Why? Do you think I should resent it if an ass had kicked me?
Alain de Botton
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As victims of hurt, we frequently don't bring up what ails us, because so many wounds look absurd in the light of day.
Alain de Botton
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Taking architecture seriously therefore makes some singular and strenuous demands upon us...It means conceding that we are inconveniently vulnerable to the colour of our wallpaper and that our sense of purpose may be derailed by an unfortunate bedspread
Alain de Botton
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It is striking how much more seriously we are likely to be taken after we have been dead a few centuries.
Alain de Botton