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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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Alain de Botton
Age: 55
Born: 1969
Born: December 20
Journalist
Philosopher
Publisher
Writer
City of Zurich
Alain De Botton
Perhaps
Hold
Books
Best
Console
Book
Stations
Love
Drive
Lonely
Service

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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.
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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.
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The inability to live in the present lies in the fear of leaving the sheltered position of anticipation or memory, and so of admitting that this is the only life that one is ever likely (heavenly intervention aside) to live.
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So many complaints boil down to the belly ache of the fragile, mortal, ignored ego in a vast and indifferent universe.
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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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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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Only as we mature does affection begin to depend on achievement.
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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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There are selections so acute that they come to define a place, with the result that we can no longer travel through that landscape without being reminded of what a great artist noticed there.
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What we find exotic abroad may be what we hunger for in vain at home.
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Must being in love always mean being in pain?
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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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It is not necessarily at home that we best encounter our true selves. The furniture insists that we cannot change because it does not the domestic setting keeps us tethered to the person we are in ordinary life, who may not be who we essentially are.
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One of the best protections against disappointment is to have a lot going on.
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We read the weird tales in newspapers to crowd out the even weirder stuff inside us.
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Forgiveness requires a sense that bad behaviour is a sign of suffering rather than malice.
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Our homes do not have to offer us permanent occupancy or store our clothes to merit the name. To speak of home in relation to a building is simply to recognise its harmony with our own prized internal song. Home can be an airport or a library, a garden or a motorway diner.
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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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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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The secular world is full of holes. We have secularized badly.
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