Quote

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.

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
Something
Feeling
Unimaginative
Way
Fact
Endeavoring
Love
Feelings
Excites
Think
Facts
Purchase
Thinking
Beautiful
Dealing
Someone
Longing
May
Response
Trying
Sleep

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After 40 (old age for most of man's history), one should strive to be more or less packed and ready to go were the end call to come.
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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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The telephone becomes an instrument of torture in the demonic hands of a beloved who doesn't call.
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Not everyone is worth listening to.
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The fear of saying something stupid (which stupid people never have) has censored far more good ideas than bad ones.
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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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Arguments are like eels: however logical, they may slip from the minds weak grasp unless fixed there by imagery and style.
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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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The good parent: someone who doesn't mind, for a time, being hated by their children.
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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.
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Don't despair: despair suggests you are in total control and know what is coming. You don't - surrender to events with hope.
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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.
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In their different ways, art and philosophy help us, in Schopenhauer's words, to turn pain into knowledge.
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The moment we cry in a film is not when things are sad but when they turn out to be more beautiful than we expected them to be.
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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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According to Montaigne, it was the oppressive notion that we had complete mental control over our bodies, and the horror of departing from this portrait of normality, that had left the man unable to perform sexually.
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A good half of the art of living is resilience.
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It is not just nature that defies us. Human life is as overwhelming... If we spend time in it [the vast spaces of nature], they may help us to accept more graciously the great, unfathomable events that molest our lives and will inevitably return us to dust.
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Good sex isn't just fun, it keeps us sane and happy. Having sex with someone makes us feel wanted, alive and potent.
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