Quote

A dominant impulse on encountering beauty is to wish to hold on to it, to possess it and give it weight in one’s life. There is an urge to say, ‘I was here, I saw this and it mattered to me.

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
Give
Possess
Giving
Impulse
Life
Weight
Travel
Encountering
Saws
Mattered
Hold
Urge
Beauty
Urges
Wish
Dominant

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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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In the works of Lucretius, we find two reasons why we shouldn't worry about death. If you have had a successful life, Lucretius tell us, there's no reason to mind its end. And, if you haven't had a good time, Why do you seek to add more years, which would also pass but ill?
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It would be foolish to describe the logistics hub as merely ugly, for it has the horrifying, soulless, immaculate beauty characteristic of many of the workplaces of the modern world.
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Once I began to consider everything as being of potential interest, objects released latent layers of value.
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What is fascinating about marriage is why anyone wants to get married.
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One of the better guarantors of ending up in a good relationship: an advanced capacity to be alone.
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Anxiety is the handmaiden of contemporary ambition.
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I'm also interested in the modern suggestion that you can have a combination of love and sex in a marriage - which no previous society has ever believed.
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The genius of religions is that they structure the inner life.
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It should not be Illiers-Combray that we visit: a genuine homage to Proust would be to look at our world through his eyes, not look at his world through our eyes.
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In their different ways, art and philosophy help us, in Schopenhauer's words, to turn pain into knowledge.
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Maturity: knowing where you're crazy, trying to warn others of the fact and striving to keep yourself under control.
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Philosophy had supplied Socrates with convictions in which he had been able to have rational, as opposed to hysterical, confidence when faced with disapproval.
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There is always the option of being emotionally lazy, that is, of quoting.
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I passionately believe that's it's not just what you say that counts, it's also how you say it - that the success of your argument critically depends on your manner of presenting it.
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The price we have paid for expecting to be so much more than our ancestors is a perpetual anxiety that we are far from being all we might be.
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Reputation matters so much only because people so seldom think for themselves.
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