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One of the best protections against disappointment is to have a lot going on.

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
Protections
Disappointment
Protection
Best
Going

More quotes by Alain de Botton

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The longing for a destiny is no nowhere stronger than in our romantic life. All too often forced to share our bed with those who cannot fathom our soul, can we not be forgiven if we believe ourselves fated to stumble one day upon the man or woman of our dreams.
Alain de Botton
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You have to be quite heavily invested in someone to do them the honour of telling them you're annoyed with them.
Alain de Botton
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We should not feel embarrassed by our difficulties, only by our failure to grow anything beautiful from them.
Alain de Botton
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Year-end financial statements express a truth about office life which is no less irrefutable yet also, in the end, no less irrelevant or irritating than an evolutionary biologist's proud reminder that the purpose of existence lies in the propagation of our genes.
Alain de Botton
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Only as we mature does affection begin to depend on achievement.
Alain de Botton
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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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An argument in a couple: 2 people attempting to introduce each other to important truths - by panicked shouting.
Alain de Botton
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Bad art might be defined as a series of bad choices about what to show and what to leave out.
Alain de Botton
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My writing always came out of a very personal place, out of an attempt to stay sane.
Alain de Botton
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We used to build temples, and museums are about as close as secular society dares to go in facing up to the idea that a good building can change your life (and a bad one ruin it).
Alain de Botton
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The arrogance that says analysing the relationship between reasons and causes is more important than writing a philosophy of shyness or sadness or friendship drives me nuts. I can't accept that.
Alain de Botton
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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.
Alain de Botton
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We each appear to hold within ourselves a range of divergent views as to our native qualities.. And amid such uncertainty, we typically turn to the wider world to settle the question of our significance.. we seem beholden to affections of others to endure ourselves.
Alain de Botton
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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
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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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Art cannot single-handedly create enthusiasm... it merely contributes to enthusiasm and guides us to be more conscious of feelings that we might previously have experienced only tentatively or hurriedly.
Alain de Botton
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People who go on to be writers are those who can forgive themselves the horror of the first draft.
Alain de Botton
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To be shown love is to feel ourselves the object of concern: our presence is noted, our name is registered, our views are listened to, our failings are treated with indulgence and our needs are ministered to. And under such care, we flourish.
Alain de Botton
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There is real danger of a disconnect between what's on your business card and who you are deep inside, and it's not a disconnect that the world is ready to be patient with.
Alain de Botton
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There is always the option of being emotionally lazy, that is, of quoting.
Alain de Botton