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A notorious inability to express emotions makes human beings the only animals capable of suicide.
Alain de Botton
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Alain de Botton
Age: 55
Born: 1969
Born: December 20
Journalist
Philosopher
Publisher
Writer
City of Zurich
Alain De Botton
Animal
Inability
Makes
Suicide
Human
Emotions
Humans
Express
Animals
Beings
Capable
Emotion
Notorious
More quotes by Alain de Botton
Because the rhythm of conversation makes no allowance for dead periods, because the presence of others calls for continuous responses, we are left to regret the inanity of what we say, and the missed opportunity of what we do not.
Alain de Botton
to design means forcing ourselves to unlearn what we believe we already know, patiently to take apart the mechanisms behind our reflexes and to acknowledge the mystery and stupefying complexity of everyday gestures like switching off a light of turning on a tap
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It is not necessarily at home that we best encounter our true selves. The furniture insists that we cannot change because it does not the domestic setting keeps us tethered to the person we are in ordinary life, who may not be who we essentially are.
Alain de Botton
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.
Alain de Botton
To look at the paper is to raise a seashell to one's ear and to be overwhelmed by the roar of humanity.
Alain de Botton
If our lives are dominated by a search for happiness, then perhaps few activities reveal as much about the dynamics of this quest - in all its ardour and paradoxes - than our travels.
Alain de Botton
Literature deserves its prestige for one reason above all others - because it's a tool to help us live and die with a little bit more wisdom, goodness, and sanity.
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What is a snob? A snob is anybody who takes a small part of you and uses that to come to a complete vision of who you are. That is snobbery.
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True love is a lack of desire to check one's smartphone in another's presence.
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The true nature of bureaucracy may be nowhere more obvious to the observer than in a developing country, for only there will it still be made manifest by the full complement of documents, files, veneered desks and cabinets - which convey the strict and inverse relationship between productivity and paperwork.
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Curiosity might be pictured as being made up of chains of small questions extending outwards, sometimes over huge distances, from a central hub composed of a few blunt, large questions.
Alain de Botton
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.
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We read the weird tales in newspapers to crowd out the even weirder stuff inside us.
Alain de Botton
Religions are so subtle, so complicated, so intelligent in many ways that they're not fit to be abandoned to the religious alone they're for all of us.
Alain de Botton
I know a lot about writing, but I don't know much about how other industries work. I've tried to use my naivety to my advantage.
Alain de Botton
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.
Alain de Botton
Being funny should be an incidental byproduct of trying to get to something truthful, not a destination in itself.
Alain de Botton
There is always the option of being emotionally lazy, that is, of quoting.
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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.
Alain de Botton
Our disrespect for thinking: someone sitting in a chair, gazing out of a window blankly, always described as 'doing nothing'.
Alain de Botton