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Never too late to learn some embarrassingly basic, stupidly obvious things about oneself.

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
Obvious
Oneself
Students
Late
Learn
Inspirational
Embarrassingly
Things
Stupidly
Never
Basic

More quotes by Alain de Botton

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What we seek, at the deepest level, is inwardly to resemble, rather than physically to possess, the objects and places that touch us through their beauty.
Alain de Botton
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How do the stems connect to the roots?' 'Where is the mist coming from?' 'Why does one tree seem darker than another?' These questions are implicitly asked and answered in the process of sketching.
Alain de Botton
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Everyone returns us to a different sense of ourselves, for we become a little of who they think we are.
Alain de Botton
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Paying tax should be framed as a glorious civic duty worthy of gratitude - not a punishment for making money.
Alain de Botton
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Work is most fulfilling when you're at the comfortable, exciting edge of not quite knowing what you are doing.
Alain de Botton
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Rather than employing it as a supplement to active, conscious seeing, they used the medium as a substitute, paying less attention to the world than they had done previously, taking it on faith that photography automatically assured them possession of it.
Alain de Botton
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The more dignity is widely and freely available in a society, the less people want to be famous.
Alain de Botton
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In the gap between who we wish one day to be and who we are at present, must come pain, anxiety, envy and humiliation.
Alain de Botton
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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.
Alain de Botton
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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.
Alain de Botton
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Most of what makes a book 'good' is that we are reading it at the right moment for us.
Alain de Botton
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We study biology, physics, movements of glaciers... Where are the classes on envy, feeling wronged, despair, bitterness.
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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Instead of bringing back 1600 plants, we might return from our journeys with a collection of small unfêted but life-enhancing thoughts.
Alain de Botton
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The fear of saying something stupid (which stupid people never have) has censored far more good ideas than bad ones.
Alain de Botton
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The most unbearable thing about many successful people is not - as we flatteringly think - how lazy they are, but how hard they work.
Alain de Botton
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In the works of Lucretius, we find two reasons why we shouldn't worry about death. If you have had a successful life, Lucretius tell us, there's no reason to mind its end. And, if you haven't had a good time, Why do you seek to add more years, which would also pass but ill?
Alain de Botton
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Anxiety is the handmaiden of contemporary ambition.
Alain de Botton
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One of the unexpectedly important things that art can do for us is to teach us how to suffer more successfully.
Alain de Botton
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In Britain, because I live here, I can also run into problems of envy and competition. But all this is just in a day's work for a writer. You can't put stuff out there without someone calling you a complete fool. Oh, well.
Alain de Botton