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Cynics are - beneath it all - only idealists with awkwardly high standards.

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
Cynics
Idealists
Idealist
Beneath
Standards
High
Awkwardly

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It is by finding out what something is not that one comes closest to understanding what it is.
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Socrates, on being insulted in the marketplace, asked by a passerby, Don't you worry about being called names? retorted, Why? Do you think I should resent it if an ass had kicked me?
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As an atheist, I think there are lots of things religions get up to which are of value to non-believers - and one of those things is trying to be a bit better than we normally manage to be.
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The only way to be happy is to realise how much depends on how you look at things
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What we find exotic abroad may be what we hunger for in vain at home.
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He did not mean to depress us, rather to free us from expectations which inspire bitterness. It is consoling, when love has let us down, to hear that happiness was never part of the plan.
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It is in dialogue with pain that many beautiful things acquire their value. Acquaintance with grief turns out to be one of the more unusual prerequisites of architectural appreciation. We might, quite aside from all other requirements, need to be a little sad before buildings can properly touch us.
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It's hard loving those who don't much like themselves: If you're so great, why would you think I'm so great.
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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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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.
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We need a home in the psychological sense as much as we need one in the physical: to compensate for a vulnerability. We need a refuge to shore up our states of mind, because so much of the world is opposed to our allegiances. We need our rooms to align us to desirable versions of ourselves and to keep alive the important, evanescent sides of us.
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Travel agents would be wiser to ask us what we hope to change about our lives rather than simply where we wish to go.
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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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Booksellers are the most valuable destination for the lonely, given the numbers of books that were written because authors couldn't find anyone to talk to.
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Art holds out the promise of inner wholeness.
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A 'good job' can be both practically attractive while still not good enough to devote your entire life to.
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Forgiveness requires a sense that bad behaviour is a sign of suffering rather than malice.
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Reputation matters so much only because people so seldom think for themselves.
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Most of our childhood is stored not in photos, but in certain biscuits, lights of day, smells, textures of carpet.
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Curiosity takes ignorance seriously - and is confident enough to admit when it's in the dark. It is aware of not knowing. And then it sets out to do something about it.
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