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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.

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
Tiny
Turn
Turns
Bigs
Obligations
Fear
Disappointing
Others
Kills
Thing
Thousands
Obligation

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One kind of good book should leave you asking: how did the author know that about me?
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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 are continuously challenged to discover new works of culture—and, in the process, we don’t allow any one of them to assume a weight in our minds.
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I feel that the great challenge of our time is the communication of ideas.
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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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It seems the only way to write a half decent book is to worry oneself sick on an hourly basis that one is producing a complete disaster.
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...if the beginnings of love and amorous politics are equally rosy, then the ends may be equally bloody.
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Instead of bringing back 1600 plants, we might return from our journeys with a collection of small unfêted but life-enhancing thoughts.
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Not being understood may be taken as a sign that there is much in one to understand.
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The degree of sympathy we feel regarding another's fiasco is directly proportional to how easy or difficult it is for us to imagine ourselves, under like circumstances, making a similar mistake.
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Intimacy is the capacity to be rather weird with someone - and finding that that's ok with them.
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He was marked out by his relentless ability to find fault with others' mediocrity - suggesting that a certain type of intelligence may be at heart nothing more or less than a superior capacity for dissatisfaction.
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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 lesson? To respond to the unexpected and hurtful behavior of others with something more than a wipe of the glasses, to see it as a chance to expand our understanding.
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As adults, we try to develop the character traits that would have rescued our parents.
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Though it may feel otherwise, enjoying life is no more dangerous than apprehending it with continuous anxiety and gloom.
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The mind may be reluctant to think properly when thinking is all it is supposed to do the task can be as paralysing as having to tell a joke or mimic an accent on demand.
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We read the weird tales in newspapers to crowd out the even weirder stuff inside us.
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Cynics are - beneath it all - only idealists with awkwardly high standards.
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It is perhaps sad books that best console us when we are sad.
Alain de Botton