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Though it may feel otherwise, enjoying life is no more dangerous than apprehending it with continuous anxiety and gloom.

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
Enjoy
Continuous
May
Enjoying
Feel
Enjoyment
Feels
Anxiety
Life
Otherwise
Dangerous
Worry
Apprehending
Though
Gloom

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Serious journalists often imagine society is adrift because people don't know certain things. Yet often, they know but just don't care. So the task of serious journalism isn't just to lay out truths. It is to make vital truths compelling to a big audience.
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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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Never too late to learn some embarrassingly basic, stupidly obvious things about oneself.
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The greatest works of art speak to us without knowing us.
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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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The genius of religions is that they structure the inner life.
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The challenge of modern relationships: how to prove more interesting than the other's smartphone.
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We should read other people's books in order to learn what we feel it is our own thoughts we should be developing, even if it is another writer's thought that help us to do so.
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The longing for destiny is nowhere stronger than in our romantic life.
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You normally have to be bashed about a bit by life to see the point of daffodils, sunsets and uneventful nice days.
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Why, then, if expensive things cannot bring us remarkable joy, are we so powerfully drawn to them?
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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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To one's enemies: I hate myself more than you ever could.
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We are sensitized by the books we read. And the more books we read, and the deeper their lessons sink into us, the more pairs of glasses we have. And those glasses enable us to see things we would have otherwise missed.
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It is in dialogue with pain that many beautiful things acquire their value. Acquaintance with grief turns out to be one of the more unusual prerequisites of architectural appreciation. We might, quite aside from all other requirements, need to be a little sad before buildings can properly touch us.
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Unnatural to expect that learning to be happy should be any easier than, say, learning to play the violin or require any less practice.
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The materialistic view of happiness of our age starkly revealed in our understanding of the word luxury.
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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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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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When I see someone like Richard Dawkins, I see my father. I grew up with that. I'm basically the child of Richard Dawkins.
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