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My writing always came out of a very personal place, out of an attempt to stay sane.

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
Sane
Attempt
Stay
Personal
Came
Place
Writing
Always

More quotes by Alain de Botton

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The more closely we analyze what we consider 'sexy,' the more clearly we will understand that eroticism is the feeling of excitement we experience at finding another human being who shares our values and our sense of the meaning of existence.
Alain de Botton
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It is perhaps sad books that best console us when we are sad, and to lonely service stations that we should drive when there is no one for us to hold or love.
Alain de Botton
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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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To be shown love is to feel ourselves the object of concern: our presence is noted, our name is registered, our views are listened to, our failings are treated with indulgence and our needs are ministered to. And under such care, we flourish.
Alain de Botton
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I know a lot about writing, but I don't know much about how other industries work. I've tried to use my naivety to my advantage.
Alain de Botton
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We are certainly influenced by role models, and if we are surrounded by images of beautiful rich people, we will start to think that to be beautiful and rich is very important - just as in the Middle Ages, people were surrounded by images of religious piety.
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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Envy: a confused, tangled guide to one's own ambitions.
Alain de Botton
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The company of certain people may excite our generosity and sensitivity, while that of others awakens our competitiveness and envy.
Alain de Botton
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Most of what makes a book 'good' is that we are reading it at the right moment for us.
Alain de Botton
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Every realistic picture represents a choice as to which features of reality should be given prominence no painting ever captures the whole.
Alain de Botton
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It is no coincidence that the Western attraction to sublime landscapes developed at precisely the moment when traditional beliefs in God began to wane.
Alain de Botton
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A notorious inability to express emotions makes human beings the only animals capable of suicide.
Alain de Botton
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We feel something, and reach out for the nearest phrase or hum with which to communicate, but which fails to do justice to what has induced us to do so....We stay on the outside of our impressions, as if staring at them through a frosted window, superficially related to them, yet estranged from whatever has eluded casual definition.
Alain de Botton
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Without sex, we would be dangerously invulnerable. We might believe we were not ridiculous. We wouldn't know rejection and humiliation so intimately.
Alain de Botton
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Religions are so subtle, so complicated, so intelligent in many ways that they're not fit to be abandoned to the religious alone they're for all of us.
Alain de Botton
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It is in books, poems, paintings which often give us the confidence to take seriously feelings in ourselves that we might otherwise never have thought to acknowledge.
Alain de Botton
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It would be foolish to describe the logistics hub as merely ugly, for it has the horrifying, soulless, immaculate beauty characteristic of many of the workplaces of the modern world.
Alain de Botton
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The only people we can think of as normal are those we don't yet know very well.
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