Quote

What we seek, at the deepest level, is inwardly to resemble, rather than physically to possess, the objects and places that touch us through their beauty.

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
Places
Objects
Inwardly
Level
Resemble
Levels
Deepest
Beauty
Physically
Rather
Possess
Touch
Seek

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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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Choosing a spouse and a choosing career: the two great decisions for which society refuses to set up institutional guidance.
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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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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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The degree of sympathy we feel regarding another's fiasco is directly proportional to how easy or difficult it is for us to imagine ourselves, under like circumstances, making a similar mistake.
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There is real danger of a disconnect between what's on your business card and who you are deep inside, and it's not a disconnect that the world is ready to be patient with.
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We should read other people's books in order to learn what we feel it is our own thoughts we should be developing, even if it is another writer's thought that help us to do so.
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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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Must being in love always mean being in pain?
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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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The architects who benefit us most maybe those generous enough to lay aside their claims to genius in order to devote themselves to assembling graceful but predominantly unoriginal boxes. Architecture should have the confidence and the kindness to be a little boring.
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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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Insomnia is a glamorous term for thoughts you forgot to have in the day.
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Politics is so difficult, it's generally only people who aren't quite up to the task who feel convinced they are.
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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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Work is most fulfilling when you're at the comfortable, exciting edge of not quite knowing what you are doing.
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Most of what makes a book 'good' is that we are reading it at the right moment for us.
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Let death find us as we are building up our matchstick protests against its waves.
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Forcing people to eat together is an effective way to promote tolerance.
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For all his understanding of worldly concerns, when it came to fathoming the deeper meaning of his own furious activity, Sir Bob displayed the sort of laziness for which he himself had no patience in others. He appeared to have only a passing interest in the overall purpose of his financial accumulation.
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