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: 54
Born: 1969
Born: December 20
Journalist
Philosopher
Publisher
Writer
City of Zurich
Alain De Botton
Wrong
Chains
Chance
Useless
Necklace
Without
Travel
Receptivity
Things
Build
Necklaces
Time
Necessary
Fugitive
Therefore
Beads
Danger
Connecting
Information
Chain

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Despite its maddeningly vague, inarticulate form, anxiety is almost always trying to tell you something useful and apposite.
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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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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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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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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.
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It wasn't only fanatics and drunkards who began conversations with strangers in public.
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Anyone who isn't embarrassed of who they were last year probably isn't learning enough.
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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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What is fascinating about marriage is why anyone wants to get married.
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Intuition is unconscious accumulated experience informing judgement in real time.
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Our greatest furies spring from events which violate our sense of the ground of our existence.
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The attentions of others matter to us because we are afflicted by a congenital uncertainty as to our own value, as a result of which affliction we tend to allow others' appraisals to play a determining role in how we see ourselves. Our sense of identity is held captive by the judgements of those we live among.
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There is psychological pleasure in this takeoff, too, for the swiftness of the plane’s ascent is an exemplary symbol of transformation. The display of power can inspire us to imagine analogous, decisive shifts in our own lives, to imagine that we, too, might one day surge above much that now looms over us.” P. 38-39
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To be shown love is to feel ourselves the object of concern: our presence is noted, our name is registered, our views are listened to, our failings are treated with indulgence and our needs are ministered to. And under such care, we flourish.
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A great writer picks up on those things that matter. It’s almost like their radar is attuned to the most significant moments.
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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.
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Memory is... similar to anticipation: an instrument of simplification and selection.
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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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