Quote

It is in books, poems, paintings which often give us the confidence to take seriously feelings in ourselves that we might otherwise never have thought to acknowledge.

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
Take
Painting
Giving
Books
Never
Often
Paintings
Feelings
Poems
Thought
Acknowledge
Give
Seriously
Might
Otherwise
Book
Confidence

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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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A simple problem of arithmetic: there are far more ambitions than there are grand destinies available.
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To look at the paper is to raise a seashell to one's ear and to be overwhelmed by the roar of humanity.
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Our responses to the world are crucially moulded by the company we keep, for we temper our curiosity to fit in with the expectations of others.
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It is in dialogue with pain that many beautiful things acquire their value. Acquaintance with grief turns out to be one of the more unusual prerequisites of architectural appreciation. We might, quite aside from all other requirements, need to be a little sad before buildings can properly touch us.
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How do the stems connect to the roots?' 'Where is the mist coming from?' 'Why does one tree seem darker than another?' These questions are implicitly asked and answered in the process of sketching.
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Her lie was symptomatic of a certain pride she took in mocking the romantic, in being unsentimental, matter-of-fact, stoic yet at heart she was the oppo site: idealistic, dreamy, giving, and deeply attached to everything she liked verbally to dismiss as mushy.
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The media insists on taking what someone didn't mean to say as being far closer to the truth than what they did.
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The mind may be reluctant to think properly when thinking is all it is supposed to do the task can be as paralysing as having to tell a joke or mimic an accent on demand.
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Forcing people to eat together is an effective way to promote tolerance.
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Why, then, if expensive things cannot bring us remarkable joy, are we so powerfully drawn to them?
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We read the weird tales in newspapers to crowd out the even weirder stuff inside us.
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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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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.
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It is perhaps when our lives are at their most problematic that we are likely to be most receptive to beautiful things.
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Many moments in religion seem attractive to me even though I can't believe in any of it.
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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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The happiness that may emerge from taking a second look is central to Proust's therapeutic conception. It reveals the extent to which our dissatisfactions may be the result of failing to look properly at our lives rather than the result of anything inherently deficient about them.
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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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The very act of drawing an object, however badly, swiftly takes the drawer from a woolly sense of what the object looks like to a precise awareness of its component parts and particularities.
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