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The desire for high status is never stronger than in situations where ordinary life fails to answer a median need for dignity and comfort.

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
Never
Ordinary
Median
Life
Failing
Fails
Answers
Status
Situation
Situations
High
Dignity
Desire
Stronger
Need
Comfort
Needs
Answer

More quotes by Alain de Botton

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Rage is caused by a conviction, almost comic in its optimistic origins (however tragic in its effects), that a given frustration has not been written into the contract of life.
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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.
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We should keep a careful diary of our moments of envy: they are our covert guides to what we should try to do next.
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A notorious inability to express emotions makes human beings the only animals capable of suicide.
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What is fascinating about marriage is why anyone wants to get married.
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At the heart of every frustration lies a basic structure: the collision of a wish with an unyielding reality.
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Without sex, we would be dangerously invulnerable. We might believe we were not ridiculous. We wouldn't know rejection and humiliation so intimately.
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In their different ways, art and philosophy help us, in Schopenhauer's words, to turn pain into knowledge.
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All tours are filled with humiliation. My publisher once hired a private jet to fly me to a venue where 1,000 people were waiting. It almost bankrupted him.
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The attentions of others matter to us because we are afflicted by a congenital uncertainty as to our own value, as a result of which affliction we tend to allow others' appraisals to play a determining role in how we see ourselves. Our sense of identity is held captive by the judgements of those we live among.
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What kills us isn't one big thing, but thousands of tiny obligations we can't turn down for fear of disappointing others.
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We often lose our tempers not with those who are actually to blame just with those who love us enough to forgive us our foul moods.
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The finest proof of our loyalty toward one another was our monstrous disloyalties towards everyone else.
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An argument in a couple: 2 people attempting to introduce each other to important truths - by panicked shouting.
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Must being in love always mean being in pain?
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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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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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Journeys are the midwives of thought. Few places are more conducive to internal conversations than moving planes, ships or trains.
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As an atheist, I think there are lots of things religions get up to which are of value to non-believers - and one of those things is trying to be a bit better than we normally manage to be.
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Endeavoring to purchase something we think beautiful may in fact be the most unimaginative way of dealing with the longing it excites in us, just as trying to sleep with someone may be the bluntest response to a feeling of love.
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