Quote

He was marked out by his relentless ability to find fault with others' mediocrity - suggesting that a certain type of intelligence may be at heart nothing more or less than a superior capacity for dissatisfaction.

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
Nothing
Capacity
Marked
Heart
Type
Relentless
Ability
Mediocrity
Less
Superior
Others
Fault
Certain
Superiors
May
Faults
Dissatisfaction
Find
Intelligence
Suggesting

More quotes by Alain de Botton

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We each appear to hold within ourselves a range of divergent views as to our native qualities.. And amid such uncertainty, we typically turn to the wider world to settle the question of our significance.. we seem beholden to affections of others to endure ourselves.
Alain de Botton
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People who readily accept the need for a gym will resist that their personalities might need some work too.
Alain de Botton
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Our minds are susceptible to the influence of external voices telling us what we require to be satisfied, voices that may drown out the faint sounds emitted by our souls and distract us from the careful, arduous task of accurately naming our priorities.
Alain de Botton
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Unhappiness can stem from having only one perspective to play with.
Alain de Botton
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It is striking how much more seriously we are likely to be taken after we have been dead a few centuries.
Alain de Botton
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Although I don't believe in God, Bach's music shows me what a love of God must feel like.
Alain de Botton
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The blunt large questions become connected to smaller, apparently esoteric ones.
Alain de Botton
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The more familiar two people become, the more the language they speak together departs from that of the ordinary, dictionary-defined discourse. Familiarity creates a new language, an in-house language of intimacy that carries reference to the story the two lovers are weaving together and that cannot be readily understood by others.
Alain de Botton
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We should not feel embarrassed by our difficulties, only by our failure to grow anything beautiful from them.
Alain de Botton
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The activities of drawing, eating and drinking, all involve assimilations by the self of desirable elements from the world, a transfer of goodness from without to within.
Alain de Botton
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The secular world is full of holes. We have secularized badly.
Alain de Botton
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as the determinants of high status keep shifting, so, too, naturally, will the triggers of status anxiety be altered.
Alain de Botton
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I learnt to stop fantasising about the perfect job or the perfect relationship because that can actually be an excuse for not living.
Alain de Botton
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Bad architecture is in the end as much a failure of psychology as of design. It is an example expressed through materials of the same tendencies which in other domains will lead us to marry the wrong people, choose inappropriate jobs and book unsuccessful holidays: the tendency not to understand who we are and what will satisfy us.
Alain de Botton
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Gaffe-focused journalism: revenge of intelligent people who know true evils are out there but lack the access/time to get to them.
Alain de Botton
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The dream of the news is that it makes us care about other people and situations. But we cannot identify with people to whom we haven't been introduced. Humans will only respond to art, to people who are skilled in making you care.
Alain de Botton
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These inventors were elevating the formulation of entrepreneurial ideas to the status of a visionary activity. Though forced to justify their efforts in the pragmatic language of venture capital, they were at heart utopian thinkers intent on transforming the world.
Alain de Botton
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We may seek a fortune for no greater reason than to secure the respect and attention of people who would otherwise look straight through us.
Alain de Botton
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Our bodies hold our minds hostage to their whims and rhythms.
Alain de Botton
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We read the weird tales in newspapers to crowd out the even weirder stuff inside us.
Alain de Botton