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As adults, we try to develop the character traits that would have rescued our parents.

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
Would
Rescued
Traits
Develop
Adults
Parents
Parent
Character
Trying

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We will cease to be angry once we cease to be so hopeful.
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Happiness is impossible for longer than 15 minutes. We are the descendants of creatures who, above all else, worried.
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Responsible for wrapping the iron fist of authority in its velvet glove is Jane Axtell, head of the accountancy firm's Human Resources department.
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To be shown love is to feel ourselves the object of concern: our presence is noted, our name is registered, our views are listened to, our failings are treated with indulgence and our needs are ministered to. And under such care, we flourish.
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The blunt large questions become connected to smaller, apparently esoteric ones.
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We should keep a careful diary of our moments of envy: they are our covert guides to what we should try to do next.
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The pleasure we derive from journeys is perhaps dependent more on the mindset with which we travel than on the destination we travel to.
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We need a home in the psychological sense as much as we need one in the physical: to compensate for a vulnerability. We need a refuge to shore up our states of mind, because so much of the world is opposed to our allegiances. We need our rooms to align us to desirable versions of ourselves and to keep alive the important, evanescent sides of us.
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It's very hard to respect people on holiday - everybody looks so silly at the beach, it makes you hate humanity - but when you see people at their work they elicit respect, whether it's a mechanic, a stonemason or an accountant.
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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.
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It was no longer her absence that wounded me, but my growing indifference to it. Forgetting, however calming, was also a reminder of infidelity to what I had at one time held so dear.
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Only by declaring a book completely finished can one start to see how much remains to be done on it.
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We are all more intelligent than we are capable, and awareness of the insanity of love has never saved anyone from the disease.
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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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Getting to the top has an unfortunate tendency to persuade people that the system is OK after all.
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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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There's a whole category of people who miss out by not allowing themselves to be weird enough.
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To cut out every negative root would simultaneously mean choking off positive elements that might arise from it further up the stem of the plant. We should not feel embarrassed by our difficulties, only by our failure to grow anything beautiful from them.
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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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