Quote

Wealth is not an absolute. It is relative to desire. Every time we yearn for something we cannot afford, we grow poorer, whatever our resources. And every time we feel satisfied with what we have, we can be counted as rich, however little we may actually possess.

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
May
Wealth
Possess
Little
Grows
Afford
Feel
Rich
Absolutes
Feels
Whatever
Absolute
Every
Actually
Satisfied
Yearn
Something
Desire
Resources
Poorer
Time
Cannot
However
Counted
Littles
Grow
Relative

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By travelling across frontiers, on horseback and in the imagination, Montaigne invited us to to exchange local prejudices and the self division they induced for less constraining identities as citizens of the world.
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What we find exotic abroad may be what we hunger for in vain at home.
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When you look at the Moon, you think, ‘I’m really small. What are my problems?’ It sets things into perspective. We should all look at the Moon a bit more often.
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Every adult life could be said to be defined by two great love stories: the story of our quest for sexual love and the story of our quest for love from the world.
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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 lump rises in our throat at the sight of beauty from an implicit knowledge that the happiness it hints at is the exception.
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So many complaints boil down to the belly ache of the fragile, mortal, ignored ego in a vast and indifferent universe.
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The fear of saying something stupid (which stupid people never have) has censored far more good ideas than bad ones.
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Once I began to consider everything as being of potential interest, objects released latent layers of value.
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I was uncomfortable writing fiction. My love was the personal essay rather than the novel.
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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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Most victories are, in the best way, acts of revenge.
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It is in books, poems, paintings which often give us the confidence to take seriously feelings in ourselves that we might otherwise never have thought to acknowledge.
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What should worry us is not the number of people that oppose us, but how good their reasons are for doing so.
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The problem is if you really believe in a society where those who merit to get to the top, get to the top, you’ll also, by implication … believe in a society where those who deserve to get to the bottom also get to the bottom and stay there.
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One of the better guarantors of ending up in a good relationship: an advanced capacity to be alone.
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A notorious inability to express emotions makes human beings the only animals capable of suicide.
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Rage is caused by a conviction, almost comic in its optimistic origins (however tragic in its effects), that a given frustration has not been written into the contract of life.
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As victims of hurt, we frequently don't bring up what ails us, because so many wounds look absurd in the light of day.
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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.
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