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There may be significant things to learn about people by looking at what annoys them most.

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
People
Annoys
Annoying
Significant
Looking
Learn
May
Things

More quotes by Alain de Botton

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In Britain, because I live here, I can also run into problems of envy and competition. But all this is just in a day's work for a writer. You can't put stuff out there without someone calling you a complete fool. Oh, well.
Alain de Botton
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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.
Alain de Botton
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One of the better guarantors of ending up in a good relationship: an advanced capacity to be alone.
Alain de Botton
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If one felt successful, there'd be so little incentive to be successful.
Alain de Botton
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Being incomprehensible offers unparalleled protection against having nothing to say...but writing with simplicity requires courage, for there is a danger that one will be overlooked, dismissed as simpleminded by those with a tenacious belief that the impassable prose is a hallmark of intelligence.
Alain de Botton
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It is not necessarily at home that we best encounter our true selves. The furniture insists that we cannot change because it does not the domestic setting keeps us tethered to the person we are in ordinary life, who may not be who we essentially are.
Alain de Botton
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Bitterness: anger that forgot where it came from.
Alain de Botton
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The only people we can think of as normal are those we don't yet know very well.
Alain de Botton
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It is perhaps sad books that best console us when we are sad.
Alain de Botton
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True respectability stems not from the will of the majority but from proper reasoning.
Alain de Botton
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The activities of drawing, eating and drinking, all involve assimilations by the self of desirable elements from the world, a transfer of goodness from without to within.
Alain de Botton
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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
Alain de Botton
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One of the best protections against disappointment is to have a lot going on.
Alain de Botton
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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.
Alain de Botton
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Year-end financial statements express a truth about office life which is no less irrefutable yet also, in the end, no less irrelevant or irritating than an evolutionary biologist's proud reminder that the purpose of existence lies in the propagation of our genes.
Alain de Botton
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Most good thinking has its origin in fear.
Alain de Botton
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Unhappiness can stem from having only one perspective to play with.
Alain de Botton
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We need objects to remind us of the commitments we've made. That carpet from Morocco reminds us of the impulsive, freedom-loving side of ourselves we're in danger of losing touch with. Beautiful furniture gives us something to live up to. All designed objects are propaganda for a way of life.
Alain de Botton
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We keep a special place in our hearts for people who refuse to be impressed by us.
Alain de Botton
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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.
Alain de Botton