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The true nature of bureaucracy may be nowhere more obvious to the observer than in a developing country, for only there will it still be made manifest by the full complement of documents, files, veneered desks and cabinets - which convey the strict and inverse relationship between productivity and paperwork.

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
Country
Obvious
Desks
Inverse
Made
Relationship
Bureaucracy
Paperwork
Full
Documents
Complement
True
Productivity
Cabinets
Nature
Strict
Observer
Stills
Manifest
Convey
Still
Nowhere
Files
May
Developing
Observers

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It is perhaps sad books that best console us when we are sad.
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Mental health: having enough safe places in your mind for your thoughts to settle.
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The blunt large questions become connected to smaller, apparently esoteric ones.
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Our greatest furies spring from events which violate our sense of the ground of our existence.
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Forgiveness requires a sense that bad behaviour is a sign of suffering rather than malice.
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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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If our lives are dominated by a search for happiness, then perhaps few activities reveal as much about the dynamics of this quest - in all its ardour and paradoxes - than our travels.
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Life gives us no such handy markers - a storm comes, and far from this being a harbinger of death and collapse, during its course a person discovers love and truth, beauty and happiness, the rain lashing at the windows all the while.
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Most of us still caged within careers chosen for us by our not entirely worldly 18-22 year old selves.
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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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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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One's doing well if age improves even slightly one's capacity to hold on to that vital truism: This too shall pass.
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as the determinants of high status keep shifting, so, too, naturally, will the triggers of status anxiety be altered.
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Unnatural to expect that learning to be happy should be any easier than, say, learning to play the violin or require any less practice.
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Being funny should be an incidental byproduct of trying to get to something truthful, not a destination in itself.
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There is psychological pleasure in this takeoff, too, for the swiftness of the plane’s ascent is an exemplary symbol of transformation. The display of power can inspire us to imagine analogous, decisive shifts in our own lives, to imagine that we, too, might one day surge above much that now looms over us.” P. 38-39
Alain de Botton
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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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Kant and Hegel are interesting thinkers. But I am happy to insist that they are also terrible writers.
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True love is a lack of desire to check one's smartphone in another's presence.
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The study of maps and the perusal of travel books aroused in me a secret fascination that was at times almost irresistible.
Alain de Botton