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Everyone returns us to a different sense of ourselves, for we become a little of who they think we are.
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
Everyone
Sense
Become
Littles
Little
Different
Think
Returns
Thinking
Return
More quotes by Alain de Botton
How do the stems connect to the roots?' 'Where is the mist coming from?' 'Why does one tree seem darker than another?' These questions are implicitly asked and answered in the process of sketching.
Alain de Botton
The greatest works of art speak to us without knowing us.
Alain de Botton
The inability to live in the present lies in the fear of leaving the sheltered position of anticipation or memory, and so of admitting that this is the only life that one is ever likely (heavenly intervention aside) to live.
Alain de Botton
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
He did not mean to depress us, rather to free us from expectations which inspire bitterness. It is consoling, when love has let us down, to hear that happiness was never part of the plan.
Alain de Botton
Journeys are the midwives of thought. Few places are more conducive to internal conversations than moving planes, ships or trains.
Alain de Botton
The pleasure we derive from journeys is perhaps dependent more on the mindset with which we travel than on the destination we travel to.
Alain de Botton
Maturity: the confidence to have no opinions on many things.
Alain de Botton
It's hard loving those who don't much like themselves: If you're so great, why would you think I'm so great.
Alain de Botton
Perhaps it is true that we do not really exist until there is someone there to see us existing, we cannot properly speak until there is someone who can understand what we are saying in essence, we are not wholly alive until we are loved.
Alain de Botton
Objectively good spaces to work rarely end up being so in their faultlessness, quiet and well-equipped studios have a habit of rendering the fear of failure overwhelming. Original thoughts are like shy animals. We sometimes have to look the other way - towards a busy street or terminal - before they run out of their burrows.
Alain de Botton
Because the rhythm of conversation makes no allowance for dead periods, because the presence of others calls for continuous responses, we are left to regret the inanity of what we say, and the missed opportunity of what we do not.
Alain de Botton
Booksellers are the most valuable destination for the lonely, given the numbers of books that were written because authors couldn't find anyone to talk to.
Alain de Botton
A 'good job' can be both practically attractive while still not good enough to devote your entire life to.
Alain de Botton
One of love's greatest drawbacks is that, for a while at least, it is in danger of making us happy.
Alain de Botton
What should worry us is not the number of people that oppose us, but how good their reasons are for doing so.
Alain de Botton
The fear of saying something stupid (which stupid people never have) has censored far more good ideas than bad ones.
Alain de Botton
It is by finding out what something is not that one comes closest to understanding what it is.
Alain de Botton
Rather than saying 'I hate mess', it might draw more compassion to say, 'mess terrifies me as a harbinger of catastrophe'.
Alain de Botton
In their different ways, art and philosophy help us, in Schopenhauer's words, to turn pain into knowledge.
Alain de Botton
