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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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Alain de Botton
Age: 54
Born: 1969
Born: December 20
Journalist
Philosopher
Publisher
Writer
City of Zurich
Alain De Botton
Practice
Happy
Less
Violin
Play
Unnatural
Require
Expect
Easier
Learning

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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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In their different ways, art and philosophy help us, in Schopenhauer's words, to turn pain into knowledge.
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We used to build temples, and museums are about as close as secular society dares to go in facing up to the idea that a good building can change your life (and a bad one ruin it).
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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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The good parent: someone who doesn't mind, for a time, being hated by their children.
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One of love's greatest drawbacks is that, for a while at least, it is in danger of making us happy.
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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.
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It's perhaps easier now than ever before to make a good living it's perhaps harder than ever before to stay calm, to be free of career anxiety.
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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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Man seems merely dust postponed: the sublime as an encounter - pleasurable, intoxicating, even - with human weakness in the face of strength, age and size of the universe.
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Pick up any newspaper or magazine, open the TV, and you'll be bombarded with suggestions of how to have a successful life. Some of these suggestions are deeply unhelpful to our own projects and priorities - and we should take care.
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Feeling lost, crazy and desperate belongs to a good life as much as optimism, certainty and reason.
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Endeavoring to purchase something we think beautiful may in fact be the most unimaginative way of dealing with the longing it excites in us, just as trying to sleep with someone may be the bluntest response to a feeling of love.
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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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The longing for destiny is nowhere stronger than in our romantic life.
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Never too late to learn some embarrassingly basic, stupidly obvious things about oneself.
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Status anxiety definitely exists at a political level. Many Iraqis were annoyed with the US essentially for reasons of status: for not showing them respect, for humiliating them.
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Writing isn’t a career choice. It’s self-medication that over time precipitates the madness it was meant to ward off.
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To look at the paper is to raise a seashell to one's ear and to be overwhelmed by the roar of humanity.
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We should not feel embarrassed by our difficulties, only by our failure to grow anything beautiful from them.
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