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The best cure for one's bad tendencies is to see them in action in another person.

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
Tendencies
Action
Another
Persons
Best
Person
Cure
Cures

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Kant and Hegel are interesting thinkers. But I am happy to insist that they are also terrible writers.
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Never, ever become a writer. It's a nightmare.
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Rather than saying 'I hate mess', it might draw more compassion to say, 'mess terrifies me as a harbinger of catastrophe'.
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Much of the really serious trouble in the world gets going with a sense of humiliation.
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The longing for destiny is nowhere stronger than in our romantic life.
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The greatest works of art speak to us without knowing us.
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It's perhaps easier now than ever before to make a good living it's perhaps harder than ever before to stay calm, to be free of career anxiety.
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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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After 40 (old age for most of man's history), one should strive to be more or less packed and ready to go were the end call to come.
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Social media has lots of benefits, but compared to Christianity, it tends to group people by interests. Religion puts you with people who have nothing in common except that you're human.
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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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Not being understood may be taken as a sign that there is much in one to understand.
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Getting to the top has an unfortunate tendency to persuade people that the system is OK after all.
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The materialistic view of happiness of our age starkly revealed in our understanding of the word luxury.
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Architects themselves tend to shy away from the word, preferring instead to talk about the manipulation of space.
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Being content is perhaps no less easy than playing the violin well: and requires no less practice.
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We may seek a fortune for no greater reason than to secure the respect and attention of people who would otherwise look straight through us.
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I thought about societies where exceptional fortunes are built up in industries with very little connection to out sincere and significant needs, industries where it is difficult to escape from the disparity between a seriousness of means and a triviality of ends.
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Our jobs make relentless calls on a narrow band of our faculties, reducing our chances of achieving rounded personalities and leaving us to suspect (often in the gathering darkness of a Sunday evening) that much of who we are, or could be, has gone unexplored.
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Our responses to the world are crucially moulded by the company we keep, for we temper our curiosity to fit in with the expectations of others.
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