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The most attractive are not those who allow us to kiss them at once [we soon feel ungrateful] or those who never allow us to kiss them [we soon forget them], but those who coyly lead us between the two extremes.
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
Forget
Ungrateful
Two
Kiss
Feel
Extremes
Feels
Attractive
Never
Kissing
Allow
Soon
Lead
More quotes by Alain de Botton
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
We are sad at home and blame the weather and the ugliness of the buildings, but on the tropical island we learn that the state of the skies and the appearance of our dwellings can never on their own underwrite our joy nor condemn us to misery.
Alain de Botton
to design means forcing ourselves to unlearn what we believe we already know, patiently to take apart the mechanisms behind our reflexes and to acknowledge the mystery and stupefying complexity of everyday gestures like switching off a light of turning on a tap
Alain de Botton
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
What we find exotic abroad may be what we hunger for in vain at home.
Alain de Botton
If we are inclined to forget how much there is in the world besides that which we anticipate, then works of art are perhaps a little to blame, for in them we find at work the same process of simplification or selection as in the imagination.
Alain de Botton
The problem is if you really believe in a society where those who merit to get to the top, get to the top, you’ll also, by implication … believe in a society where those who deserve to get to the bottom also get to the bottom and stay there.
Alain de Botton
Writing isn’t a career choice. It’s self-medication that over time precipitates the madness it was meant to ward off.
Alain de Botton
Forcing people to eat together is an effective way to promote tolerance.
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The difference between hope and despair is a different way of telling stories from the same facts.
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A good half of the art of living is resilience.
Alain de Botton
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.
Alain de Botton
Arguments are like eels: however logical, they may slip from the minds weak grasp unless fixed there by imagery and style.
Alain de Botton
Our greatest furies spring from events which violate our sense of the ground of our existence.
Alain de Botton
There is no such thing as work-life balance. Everything worth fighting for unbalances your life.
Alain de Botton
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
The real issue is not whether baking biscuits is meaningful, but the extent to which the activity can seem to be so after it has been continuously stretched and subdivided across five thousand lives.
Alain de Botton
People only get really interesting when they start to rattle the bars of their cages.
Alain de Botton
An argument in a couple: 2 people attempting to introduce each other to important truths - by panicked shouting.
Alain de Botton
Much of the really serious trouble in the world gets going with a sense of humiliation.
Alain de Botton
