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Booksellers are the most valuable destination for the lonely, given the numbers of books that were written because authors couldn't find anyone to talk to.

Alain de Botton

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Alain de Botton
Age: 54
Born: 1969
Born: December 20
Journalist
Philosopher
Publisher
Writer
City of Zurich
Alain De Botton
Anyone
Authors
Talk
Destination
Given
Valuable
Find
Lonely
Book
Couldn
Writing
Numbers
Books
Written
Booksellers

More quotes by 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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On paper, being good sounds great but a lot depends on the atmosphere of the workplace or community we live in. We tend to become good or bad depending on the cues sent out within a particular space.
Alain de Botton
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Most of our childhood is stored not in photos, but in certain biscuits, lights of day, smells, textures of carpet.
Alain de Botton
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I went to church and couldn't swallow it. The music was nice but I don't belong there.
Alain de Botton
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Bad art might be defined as a series of bad choices about what to show and what to leave out.
Alain de Botton
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Literature deeply stands opposed to the dominant value system-the one that rewards money and power. Writers are on the other side-they make us sympathetic to ideas and feelings that are of deep importance but can’t afford airtime in a commercialized, status-consciou s, and cynical world.
Alain de Botton
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If our lives are dominated by a search for happiness, then perhaps few activities reveal as much about the dynamics of this quest - in all its ardour and paradoxes - than our travels.
Alain de Botton
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You need a long hard day's work to reveal the logic of the craving for very bad tv and alcohol.
Alain de Botton
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One of the better guarantors of ending up in a good relationship: an advanced capacity to be alone.
Alain de Botton
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Our disrespect for thinking: someone sitting in a chair, gazing out of a window blankly, always described as 'doing nothing'.
Alain de Botton
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You normally have to be bashed about a bit by life to see the point of daffodils, sunsets and uneventful nice days.
Alain de Botton
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Objectively good spaces to work rarely end up being so in their faultlessness, quiet and well-equipped studios have a habit of rendering the fear of failure overwhelming. Original thoughts are like shy animals. We sometimes have to look the other way - towards a busy street or terminal - before they run out of their burrows.
Alain de Botton
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Every time we feel satisfied with what we have, we can be counted as rich, however little we may actually possess.
Alain de Botton
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We may not agree with what religions are trying to teach us, but we can admire the institutional way in which they're doing it.
Alain de Botton
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After 40 (old age for most of man's history), one should strive to be more or less packed and ready to go were the end call to come.
Alain de Botton
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It's as though either you accept [religious] doctrine and then you can have all the nice stuff, or you reject the doctrine and you're living in some kind of spiritual wasteland under the guidance of CNN and Walmart.
Alain de Botton
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A lump rises in our throat at the sight of beauty from an implicit knowledge that the happiness it hints at is the exception.
Alain de Botton
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Curiosity takes ignorance seriously - and is confident enough to admit when it's in the dark. It is aware of not knowing. And then it sets out to do something about it.
Alain de Botton
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I think people want to get married to end their emotional uncertainty. In a way, they want to end powerful feelings, or certainly the negative ones.
Alain de Botton
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The mind does most of its best thinking when we aren't there. The answers are there in the morning.
Alain de Botton