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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.

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
Envy
Careful
Keep
Next
Moments
Covert
Trying
Diary
Diaries
Guides

More quotes by Alain de Botton

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The arrogance that says analysing the relationship between reasons and causes is more important than writing a philosophy of shyness or sadness or friendship drives me nuts. I can't accept that.
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Most of our childhood is stored not in photos, but in certain biscuits, lights of day, smells, textures of carpet.
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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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The genius of religions is that they structure the inner life.
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Maturity: knowing where you're crazy, trying to warn others of the fact and striving to keep yourself under control.
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The company of certain people may excite our generosity and sensitivity, while that of others awakens our competitiveness and envy.
Alain de Botton
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Unnatural to expect that learning to be happy should be any easier than, say, learning to play the violin or require any less practice.
Alain de Botton
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It should not be Illiers-Combray that we visit: a genuine homage to Proust would be to look at our world through his eyes, not look at his world through our eyes.
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In the gap between who we wish one day to be and who we are at present, must come pain, anxiety, envy and humiliation.
Alain de Botton
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Serious journalists often imagine society is adrift because people don't know certain things. Yet often, they know but just don't care. So the task of serious journalism isn't just to lay out truths. It is to make vital truths compelling to a big audience.
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In their different ways, art and philosophy help us, in Schopenhauer's words, to turn pain into knowledge.
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We will cease to be angry once we cease to be so hopeful.
Alain de Botton
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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.
Alain de Botton
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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.
Alain de Botton
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Journeys are the midwives of thought. Few places are more conducive to internal conversations than moving planes, ships or trains.
Alain de Botton
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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.
Alain de Botton
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The attentions of others matter to us because we are afflicted by a congenital uncertainty as to our own value, as a result of which affliction we tend to allow others' appraisals to play a determining role in how we see ourselves. Our sense of identity is held captive by the judgements of those we live among.
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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All tours are filled with humiliation. My publisher once hired a private jet to fly me to a venue where 1,000 people were waiting. It almost bankrupted him.
Alain de Botton
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Must being in love always mean being in pain?
Alain de Botton