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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.
Alain de Botton
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Alain de Botton
Age: 54
Born: 1969
Born: December 20
Journalist
Philosopher
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Writer
City of Zurich
Alain De Botton
Raise
Raises
Ears
Paper
Humanity
Look
Looks
Roar
Overwhelmed
More quotes by Alain de Botton
One wants never to give up this crystalline perspective. One wants to keep counterpositioning home with what one knows of alternative realities, as they exist in Tunis or Hyderabad. One wants never to forget that nothing here is normal, that the streets are different in Wisebaden, and Louyang, that this is just one of many possible worlds.
Alain de Botton
Most anger stems from feelings of weakness, sadness and fear: hard to remember when one is at the receiving end of its defiant roar.
Alain de Botton
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.
Alain de Botton
Paying tax should be framed as a glorious civic duty worthy of gratitude - not a punishment for making money.
Alain de Botton
It's very hard to respect people on holiday - everybody looks so silly at the beach, it makes you hate humanity - but when you see people at their work they elicit respect, whether it's a mechanic, a stonemason or an accountant.
Alain de Botton
A 'good job' can be both practically attractive while still not good enough to devote your entire life to.
Alain de Botton
to design means forcing ourselves to unlearn what we believe we already know, patiently to take apart the mechanisms behind our reflexes and to acknowledge the mystery and stupefying complexity of everyday gestures like switching off a light of turning on a tap
Alain de Botton
The problem is if you really believe in a society where those who merit to get to the top, get to the top, you’ll also, by implication … believe in a society where those who deserve to get to the bottom also get to the bottom and stay there.
Alain de Botton
Rather than saying 'I hate mess', it might draw more compassion to say, 'mess terrifies me as a harbinger of catastrophe'.
Alain de Botton
Most of our childhood is stored not in photos, but in certain biscuits, lights of day, smells, textures of carpet.
Alain de Botton
Dreams reveal we never quite get 'over' anything: it's all still in there somewhere.
Alain de Botton
Memory is... similar to anticipation: an instrument of simplification and selection.
Alain de Botton
The telephone becomes an instrument of torture in the demonic hands of a beloved who doesn't call.
Alain de Botton
Taking architecture seriously therefore makes some singular and strenuous demands upon us...It means conceding that we are inconveniently vulnerable to the colour of our wallpaper and that our sense of purpose may be derailed by an unfortunate bedspread
Alain de Botton
True respectability stems not from the will of the majority but from proper reasoning.
Alain de Botton
There's a whole category of people who miss out by not allowing themselves to be weird enough.
Alain de Botton
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.
Alain de Botton
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
One of the unexpectedly important things that art can do for us is to teach us how to suffer more successfully.
Alain de Botton
People only get really interesting when they start to rattle the bars of their cages.
Alain de Botton
