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Let death find us as we are building up our matchstick protests against its waves.

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
Waves
Protest
Wave
Building
Death
Find
Matchsticks
Protests

More quotes by 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.
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Choosing a spouse and a choosing career: the two great decisions for which society refuses to set up institutional guidance.
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It wasn't only fanatics and drunkards who began conversations with strangers in public.
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Bitterness: anger that forgot where it came from.
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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.
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Man seems merely dust postponed: the sublime as an encounter - pleasurable, intoxicating, even - with human weakness in the face of strength, age and size of the universe.
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Intimacy is the capacity to be rather weird with someone - and finding that that's ok with them.
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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.'
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These inventors were elevating the formulation of entrepreneurial ideas to the status of a visionary activity. Though forced to justify their efforts in the pragmatic language of venture capital, they were at heart utopian thinkers intent on transforming the world.
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The only way to be happy is to realise how much depends on how you look at things
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Maturity: the confidence to have no opinions on many things.
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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.
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Kant and Hegel are interesting thinkers. But I am happy to insist that they are also terrible writers.
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Art holds out the promise of inner wholeness.
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The largest part of what we call 'personality' is determined by how we've opted to defend ourselves against anxiety and sadness.
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He did not mean to depress us, rather to free us from expectations which inspire bitterness. It is consoling, when love has let us down, to hear that happiness was never part of the plan.
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I went to church and couldn't swallow it. The music was nice but I don't belong there.
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The company of certain people may excite our generosity and sensitivity, while that of others awakens our competitiveness and envy.
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We need objects to remind us of the commitments we've made. That carpet from Morocco reminds us of the impulsive, freedom-loving side of ourselves we're in danger of losing touch with. Beautiful furniture gives us something to live up to. All designed objects are propaganda for a way of life.
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The longing for a destiny is no nowhere stronger than in our romantic life. All too often forced to share our bed with those who cannot fathom our soul, can we not be forgiven if we believe ourselves fated to stumble one day upon the man or woman of our dreams.
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