Quote

A danger of travel is that we see things at the wrong time, before we have had a chance to build up the necessary receptivity and when new information is therefore as useless and fugitive as necklace beads without a connecting chain.

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
Chance
Useless
Necklace
Without
Travel
Receptivity
Things
Build
Necklaces
Time
Necessary
Fugitive
Therefore
Beads
Danger
Connecting
Information
Chain
Wrong
Chains

More quotes by Alain de Botton

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Paying tax should be framed as a glorious civic duty worthy of gratitude - not a punishment for making money.
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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.
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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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The greatest difficulty of Travel is that one is forced to take oneself along.
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As an atheist, I think there are lots of things religions get up to which are of value to non-believers - and one of those things is trying to be a bit better than we normally manage to be.
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The longing for destiny is nowhere stronger than in our romantic life.
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We wanted to test each other's capacity for survival: only if we had tried in vain to destroy one another would we know we were safe.
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Man seems merely dust postponed: the sublime as an encounter - pleasurable, intoxicating, even - with human weakness in the face of strength, age and size of the universe.
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Travel agents would be wiser to ask us what we hope to change about our lives rather than simply where we wish to go.
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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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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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The desire for high status is never stronger than in situations where ordinary life fails to answer a median need for dignity and comfort.
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There is a devilishly direct relationship between the significance of an idea and how nervous we become at the prospect of having to think about it.
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We are certainly influenced by role models, and if we are surrounded by images of beautiful rich people, we will start to think that to be beautiful and rich is very important - just as in the Middle Ages, people were surrounded by images of religious piety.
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A simple problem of arithmetic: there are far more ambitions than there are grand destinies available.
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We may not agree with what religions are trying to teach us, but we can admire the institutional way in which they're doing it.
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One of the best protections against disappointment is to have a lot going on.
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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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Our bodies hold our minds hostage to their whims and rhythms.
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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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