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A world where a majority had imbibed the lessons implicit within tragic art would be one in which the consequences of our failures would necessarily cease to weigh upon us so heavily.

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
Lessons
Weigh
Majority
Heavily
Within
Failures
Upon
Tragic
Art
Consequences
Would
Cease
World
Necessarily
Imbibed
Consequence
Implicit

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Every adult life could be said to be defined by two great love stories: the story of our quest for sexual love and the story of our quest for love from the world.
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The problem isn't so much finding good ideas (there is no shortage) as embedding the ones we have into everyday practice.
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There is a devilishly direct relationship between the significance of an idea and how nervous we become at the prospect of having to think about it.
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Happiness is impossible for longer than 15 minutes. We are the descendants of creatures who, above all else, worried.
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It is no coincidence that the Western attraction to sublime landscapes developed at precisely the moment when traditional beliefs in God began to wane.
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I am conscious of trying to stretch the boundaries of non-fiction writing. It's always surprised me how little attention many non-fiction writers pay to the formal aspects of their work.
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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.
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...if the beginnings of love and amorous politics are equally rosy, then the ends may be equally bloody.
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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 of love's greatest drawbacks is that, for a while at least, it is in danger of making us happy.
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The mind does most of its best thinking when we aren't there. The answers are there in the morning.
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Perhaps it is true that we do not really exist until there is someone there to see us existing, we cannot properly speak until there is someone who can understand what we are saying in essence, we are not wholly alive until we are loved.
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Never too late to learn some embarrassingly basic, stupidly obvious things about oneself.
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Journeys are the midwives of thought. Few places are more conducive to internal conversations than moving planes, ships or trains.
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Sweetness is the opposite of machismo, which is everywhere-and I really don't get on with machismo. I'm interested in sensitivity, and weakness, and fear, and anxiety, because I think that, at the end of the day, behind our masks, that's what we are.
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When I see someone like Richard Dawkins, I see my father. I grew up with that. I'm basically the child of Richard Dawkins.
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Everyone returns us to a different sense of ourselves, for we become a little of who they think we are.
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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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Reputation matters so much only because people so seldom think for themselves.
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Every time we feel satisfied with what we have, we can be counted as rich, however little we may actually possess.
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