Quote

There is a longing for a return to a time without the need for choices, free of the regret at the inevitable loss that all choice (however wonderful) has entailed.

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
Time
Loss
Return
Wonderful
Entailed
Choices
Longing
Free
Inevitable
Without
Regret
Need
However
Needs
Choice

More quotes by Alain de Botton

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Socrates, on being insulted in the marketplace, asked by a passerby, Don't you worry about being called names? retorted, Why? Do you think I should resent it if an ass had kicked me?
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Because the rhythm of conversation makes no allowance for dead periods, because the presence of others calls for continuous responses, we are left to regret the inanity of what we say, and the missed opportunity of what we do not.
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The dream of the news is that it makes us care about other people and situations. But we cannot identify with people to whom we haven't been introduced. Humans will only respond to art, to people who are skilled in making you care.
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A successful work will draw out the features capable of exciting a sense of beauty and interest in the spectator.
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True love is a lack of desire to check one's smartphone in another's presence.
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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 seems that most of us could benefit from a brush with a near-fatal disaster to help us recognise the important things that we are too defeated or embittered to recognise from day to day.
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Work is most fulfilling when you're at the comfortable, exciting edge of not quite knowing what you are doing.
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It seems the only way to write a half decent book is to worry oneself sick on an hourly basis that one is producing a complete disaster.
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A danger of travel is that we see things at the wrong time, before we have had a chance to build up the necessary receptivity and when new information is therefore as useless and fugitive as necklace beads without a connecting chain.
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Bitterness: anger that forgot where it came from.
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Those who divorce aren't necessarily the most unhappy, just those neatly able to believe their misery is caused by one other person.
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Wealth is not an absolute. It is relative to desire. Every time we yearn for something we cannot afford, we grow poorer, whatever our resources. And every time we feel satisfied with what we have, we can be counted as rich, however little we may actually possess.
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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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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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Choosing a spouse and a choosing career: the two great decisions for which society refuses to set up institutional guidance.
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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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There may be significant things to learn about people by looking at what annoys them most.
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Instead of bringing back 1600 plants, we might return from our journeys with a collection of small unfêted but life-enhancing thoughts.
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My writing always came out of a very personal place, out of an attempt to stay sane.
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