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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
Idealists
Idealist
Beneath
Standards
High
Awkwardly
Cynics

More quotes by Alain de Botton

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Anxiety is the handmaiden of contemporary ambition.
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The secular world is full of holes. We have secularized badly.
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Insomnia is a glamorous term for thoughts you forgot to have in the day.
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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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Wealth is not an absolute. It is relative to desire. Every time we yearn for something we cannot afford, we grow poorer, whatever our resources. And every time we feel satisfied with what we have, we can be counted as rich, however little we may actually possess.
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People who go on to be writers are those who can forgive themselves the horror of the first draft.
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The activities of drawing, eating and drinking, all involve assimilations by the self of desirable elements from the world, a transfer of goodness from without to within.
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Our capacity to draw happiness from aesthetic objects or material goods in fact seems critically dependent on our first satisfying a more important range of emotional or psychological needs, among them the need for understanding, for love, expression and respect.
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How generous was it to offer gifts to people one knew would never accept them?
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A good half of the art of living is resilience.
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Gaffe-focused journalism: revenge of intelligent people who know true evils are out there but lack the access/time to get to them.
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Literature deeply stands opposed to the dominant value system-the one that rewards money and power. Writers are on the other side-they make us sympathetic to ideas and feelings that are of deep importance but can’t afford airtime in a commercialized, status-consciou s, and cynical world.
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Though debts are condemned in the financial world, the world of friendship and love may perversely depend on well-managed debts.
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For all his understanding of worldly concerns, when it came to fathoming the deeper meaning of his own furious activity, Sir Bob displayed the sort of laziness for which he himself had no patience in others. He appeared to have only a passing interest in the overall purpose of his financial accumulation.
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Only as we mature does affection begin to depend on achievement.
Alain de Botton
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You normally have to be bashed about a bit by life to see the point of daffodils, sunsets and uneventful nice days.
Alain de Botton
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Maturity: knowing where you're crazy, trying to warn others of the fact and striving to keep yourself under control.
Alain de Botton
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I feel that the great challenge of our time is the communication of ideas.
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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Good sex isn't just fun, it keeps us sane and happy. Having sex with someone makes us feel wanted, alive and potent.
Alain de Botton