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The arrogance that says analysing the relationship between reasons and causes is more important than writing a philosophy of shyness or sadness or friendship drives me nuts. I can't accept that.

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
Causes
Sadness
Reason
Reasons
Important
Friendship
Writing
Accept
Analysing
Accepting
Shyness
Relationship
Drives
Says
Arrogance
Philosophy
Nuts

More quotes by Alain de Botton

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Though it may feel otherwise, enjoying life is no more dangerous than apprehending it with continuous anxiety and gloom.
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Must being in love always mean being in pain?
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There is a devilishly direct relationship between the significance of an idea and how nervous we become at the prospect of having to think about it.
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We should keep a careful diary of our moments of envy: they are our covert guides to what we should try to do next.
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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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Our bodies hold our minds hostage to their whims and rhythms.
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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'.
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We envy only those whom we feel ourselves to be like we envy only members of our reference group. There are few successes more unendurable than those of our close friends.
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Forcing people to eat together is an effective way to promote tolerance.
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We often lose our tempers not with those who are actually to blame just with those who love us enough to forgive us our foul moods.
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What we find exotic abroad may be what we hunger for in vain at home.
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The difference between hope and despair is a different way of telling stories from the same facts.
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The most attractive are not those who allow us to kiss them at once [we soon feel ungrateful] or those who never allow us to kiss them [we soon forget them], but those who coyly lead us between the two extremes.
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We will cease to be angry once we cease to be so hopeful.
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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.
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Endeavoring to purchase something we think beautiful may in fact be the most unimaginative way of dealing with the longing it excites in us, just as trying to sleep with someone may be the bluntest response to a feeling of love.
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The architects who benefit us most maybe those generous enough to lay aside their claims to genius in order to devote themselves to assembling graceful but predominantly unoriginal boxes. Architecture should have the confidence and the kindness to be a little boring.
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Bad architecture is in the end as much a failure of psychology as of design. It is an example expressed through materials of the same tendencies which in other domains will lead us to marry the wrong people, choose inappropriate jobs and book unsuccessful holidays: the tendency not to understand who we are and what will satisfy us.
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There is real danger of a disconnect between what's on your business card and who you are deep inside, and it's not a disconnect that the world is ready to be patient with.
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It is perhaps sad books that best console us when we are sad.
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