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Kant and Hegel are interesting thinkers. But I am happy to insist that they are also terrible writers.

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
Interesting
Happy
Hegel
Also
Kant
Thinkers
Insist
Thinker
Writers
Terrible

More quotes by 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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How do the stems connect to the roots?' 'Where is the mist coming from?' 'Why does one tree seem darker than another?' These questions are implicitly asked and answered in the process of sketching.
Alain de Botton
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There are people who say, 'Oh this guy is quite thick.' I think the reason is that, increasingly, I don't mind being simple in terms of literary expression. Others say, 'No, no, no. He went to Cambridge. He got a good degree. He must be Einstein.'
Alain de Botton
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One of our major flaws, and causes of unhappiness, is that we find it hard to take note of appreciate and be grateful for what is always around us. We suffer because we lose sight of the value of what is before us and yearn, often unfairly, for the imagined attraction elsewhere.
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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People who go on to be writers are those who can forgive themselves the horror of the first draft.
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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He was marked out by his relentless ability to find fault with others' mediocrity - suggesting that a certain type of intelligence may be at heart nothing more or less than a superior capacity for dissatisfaction.
Alain de Botton
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Curiosity might be pictured as being made up of chains of small questions extending outwards, sometimes over huge distances, from a central hub composed of a few blunt, large questions.
Alain de Botton
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Most anger stems from feelings of weakness, sadness and fear: hard to remember when one is at the receiving end of its defiant roar.
Alain de Botton
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It is perhaps sad books that best console us when we are sad.
Alain de Botton
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One wants never to give up this crystalline perspective. One wants to keep counterpositioning home with what one knows of alternative realities, as they exist in Tunis or Hyderabad. One wants never to forget that nothing here is normal, that the streets are different in Wisebaden, and Louyang, that this is just one of many possible worlds.
Alain de Botton
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Happiness is impossible for longer than 15 minutes. We are the descendants of creatures who, above all else, worried.
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 one felt successful, there'd be so little incentive to be successful.
Alain de Botton
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The blunt large questions become connected to smaller, apparently esoteric ones.
Alain de Botton
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The difference between hope and despair is a different way of telling stories from the same facts.
Alain de Botton
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It is not necessarily at home that we best encounter our true selves. The furniture insists that we cannot change because it does not the domestic setting keeps us tethered to the person we are in ordinary life, who may not be who we essentially are.
Alain de Botton
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Writing isn’t a career choice. It’s self-medication that over time precipitates the madness it was meant to ward off.
Alain de Botton
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Gaffe-focused journalism: revenge of intelligent people who know true evils are out there but lack the access/time to get to them.
Alain de Botton