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A 'good job' can be both practically attractive while still not good enough to devote your entire life to.

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
Balance
Jobs
Stills
Still
Enough
Devote
Work
Practically
Good
Attractive
Life
Entire

More quotes by Alain de Botton

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One wants never to give up this crystalline perspective. One wants to keep counterpositioning home with what one knows of alternative realities, as they exist in Tunis or Hyderabad. One wants never to forget that nothing here is normal, that the streets are different in Wisebaden, and Louyang, that this is just one of many possible worlds.
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Intimacy is the capacity to be rather weird with someone - and finding that that's ok with them.
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According to Montaigne, it was the oppressive notion that we had complete mental control over our bodies, and the horror of departing from this portrait of normality, that had left the man unable to perform sexually.
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We read the weird tales in newspapers to crowd out the even weirder stuff inside us.
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It is perhaps when our lives are at their most problematic that we are likely to be most receptive to beautiful things.
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The company of certain people may excite our generosity and sensitivity, while that of others awakens our competitiveness and envy.
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The moment we cry in a film is not when things are sad but when they turn out to be more beautiful than we expected them to be.
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Must being in love always mean being in pain?
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I assemble my ideas in pieces on a computer file, then gradually find a place for them on a piece of scaffolding I erect.
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Do you love me enough that I may be weak with you? Everyone loves strength, but do you love me for my weakness? That is the real test.
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True respectability stems not from the will of the majority but from proper reasoning.
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When you look at the Moon, you think, ‘I’m really small. What are my problems?’ It sets things into perspective. We should all look at the Moon a bit more often.
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Unnatural to expect that learning to be happy should be any easier than, say, learning to play the violin or require any less practice.
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There are people who say, 'Oh this guy is quite thick.' I think the reason is that, increasingly, I don't mind being simple in terms of literary expression. Others say, 'No, no, no. He went to Cambridge. He got a good degree. He must be Einstein.'
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One of our major flaws, and causes of unhappiness, is that we find it hard to take note of appreciate and be grateful for what is always around us. We suffer because we lose sight of the value of what is before us and yearn, often unfairly, for the imagined attraction elsewhere.
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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.
Alain de Botton
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As we write, so we build: to keep a record of what matters to us.
Alain de Botton
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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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Man seems merely dust postponed: the sublime as an encounter - pleasurable, intoxicating, even - with human weakness in the face of strength, age and size of the universe.
Alain de Botton
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We keep a special place in our hearts for people who refuse to be impressed by us.
Alain de Botton