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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.

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
Helping
Brushes
Seems
Fatal
Important
Defeated
Things
Benefit
Near
Disaster
Embittered
Benefits
Brush
Help
Recognise

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Status anxiety definitely exists at a political level. Many Iraqis were annoyed with the US essentially for reasons of status: for not showing them respect, for humiliating them.
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It wasn't only fanatics and drunkards who began conversations with strangers in public.
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There is psychological pleasure in this takeoff, too, for the swiftness of the plane’s ascent is an exemplary symbol of transformation. The display of power can inspire us to imagine analogous, decisive shifts in our own lives, to imagine that we, too, might one day surge above much that now looms over us.” P. 38-39
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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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Alcohol-inspired fights are a reminder of the price we pay for our daily submission at the altars of prudence and order.
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People who readily accept the need for a gym will resist that their personalities might need some work too.
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The best cure for one's bad tendencies is to see them in action in another person.
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Bitterness: anger that forgot where it came from.
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It is perhaps sad books that best console us when we are sad.
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If our lives are dominated by a search for happiness, then perhaps few activities reveal as much about the dynamics of this quest - in all its ardour and paradoxes - than our travels.
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The only people we can think of as normal are those we don't yet know very well.
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The media insists on taking what someone didn't mean to say as being far closer to the truth than what they did.
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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.
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Most good thinking has its origin in fear.
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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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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 challenge for a human now is to be more interesting to another than his or her smartphone.
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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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The very act of drawing an object, however badly, swiftly takes the drawer from a woolly sense of what the object looks like to a precise awareness of its component parts and particularities.
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Feeling lost, crazy and desperate belongs to a good life as much as optimism, certainty and reason.
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