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I was uncomfortable writing fiction. My love was the personal essay rather than the novel.

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
Personal
Rather
Writing
Love
Essay
Essays
Uncomfortable
Novel
Fiction

More quotes by Alain de Botton

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Though debts are condemned in the financial world, the world of friendship and love may perversely depend on well-managed debts.
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To cut out every negative root would simultaneously mean choking off positive elements that might arise from it further up the stem of the plant. We should not feel embarrassed by our difficulties, only by our failure to grow anything beautiful from them.
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Most victories are, in the best way, acts of revenge.
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To one's enemies: I hate myself more than you ever could.
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Envy: a confused, tangled guide to one's own ambitions.
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We are continuously challenged to discover new works of culture—and, in the process, we don’t allow any one of them to assume a weight in our minds.
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Let's say you went to Harvard or Oxford or Cambridge, and you said, 'I've come here because I'm in search of morality, guidance and consolation I want to know how to live,' - they would show you the way to the insane asylum.
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.
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What kills us isn't one big thing, but thousands of tiny obligations we can't turn down for fear of disappointing others.
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One kind of good book should leave you asking: how did the author know that about me?
Alain de Botton
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Year-end financial statements express a truth about office life which is no less irrefutable yet also, in the end, no less irrelevant or irritating than an evolutionary biologist's proud reminder that the purpose of existence lies in the propagation of our genes.
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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People who readily accept the need for a gym will resist that their personalities might need some work too.
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Rather than saying 'I hate mess', it might draw more compassion to say, 'mess terrifies me as a harbinger of catastrophe'.
Alain de Botton
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We are presented with an unpleasant choice between either committing to peculiar concepts about immaterial deities or letting go entirely of a host of consoling, subtle or just charming rituals for which we struggle to find equivalents in secular society.
Alain de Botton
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When I see someone like Richard Dawkins, I see my father. I grew up with that. I'm basically the child of Richard Dawkins.
Alain de Botton
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When work is not going well, it's useful to remember that our identities stretch beyond what is on the business card, that we were people long before we became workers - and will continue to be human once we have put our tools down forever.
Alain de Botton
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Travel agents would be wiser to ask us what we hope to change about our lives rather than simply where we wish to go.
Alain de Botton
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Once I began to consider everything as being of potential interest, objects released latent layers of value.
Alain de Botton
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I learnt to stop fantasising about the perfect job or the perfect relationship because that can actually be an excuse for not living.
Alain de Botton