Quote

The inability to live in the present lies in the fear of leaving the sheltered position of anticipation or memory, and so of admitting that this is the only life that one is ever likely (heavenly intervention aside) to live.

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
Live
Memory
Admitting
Life
Lies
Intervention
Memories
Anticipation
Position
Inability
Present
Aside
Lying
Heavenly
Fear
Likely
Ever
Leaving
Sheltered

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What kills us isn't one big thing, but thousands of tiny obligations we can't turn down for fear of disappointing others.
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Not everyone is worth listening to.
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Every adult life could be said to be defined by two great love stories: the story of our quest for sexual love and the story of our quest for love from the world.
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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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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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In their different ways, art and philosophy help us, in Schopenhauer's words, to turn pain into knowledge.
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It is striking how much more seriously we are likely to be taken after we have been dead a few centuries.
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Most good thinking has its origin in fear.
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The problem isn't so much finding good ideas (there is no shortage) as embedding the ones we have into everyday practice.
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I learnt to stop fantasising about the perfect job or the perfect relationship because that can actually be an excuse for not living.
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The arrogance that says analysing the relationship between reasons and causes is more important than writing a philosophy of shyness or sadness or friendship drives me nuts. I can't accept that.
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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.
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How generous was it to offer gifts to people one knew would never accept them?
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It was no longer her absence that wounded me, but my growing indifference to it. Forgetting, however calming, was also a reminder of infidelity to what I had at one time held so dear.
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A simple problem of arithmetic: there are far more ambitions than there are grand destinies available.
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What is fascinating about marriage is why anyone wants to get married.
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We should keep a careful diary of our moments of envy: they are our covert guides to what we should try to do next.
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We envy only those whom we feel ourselves to be like we envy only members of our reference group. There are few successes more unendurable than those of our close friends.
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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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Sweetness is the opposite of machismo, which is everywhere-and I really don't get on with machismo. I'm interested in sensitivity, and weakness, and fear, and anxiety, because I think that, at the end of the day, behind our masks, that's what we are.
Alain de Botton