Quote

The happiness that may emerge from taking a second look is central to Proust's therapeutic conception. It reveals the extent to which our dissatisfactions may be the result of failing to look properly at our lives rather than the result of anything inherently deficient about them.

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
Rather
Central
Proust
Lives
Extent
Therapeutic
Anything
Result
Dissatisfaction
May
Failing
Inherently
Look
Taking
Emerge
Looks
Second
Reveals
Results
Properly
Happiness
Conception
Deficient

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Architects themselves tend to shy away from the word, preferring instead to talk about the manipulation of space.
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We feel something, and reach out for the nearest phrase or hum with which to communicate, but which fails to do justice to what has induced us to do so....We stay on the outside of our impressions, as if staring at them through a frosted window, superficially related to them, yet estranged from whatever has eluded casual definition.
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Arguments are like eels: however logical, they may slip from the minds weak grasp unless fixed there by imagery and style.
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Only as we mature does affection begin to depend on achievement.
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Despite the best efforts of critics and the hopes of authors, our tastes in books are probably as inherent & unbudgeable as those in food.
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Although I don't believe in God, Bach's music shows me what a love of God must feel like.
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What am I supposed to do here? What am I supposed to think?
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The most attractive are not those who allow us to kiss them at once [we soon feel ungrateful] or those who never allow us to kiss them [we soon forget them], but those who coyly lead us between the two extremes.
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There is no such thing as work-life balance. Everything worth fighting for unbalances your life.
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A simple problem of arithmetic: there are far more ambitions than there are grand destinies available.
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The longing for destiny is nowhere stronger than in our romantic life.
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I am in general a very pessimistic person with an optimistic, day to day take on things. The bare facts of life are utterly terrifying. And yet, one can laugh. Indeed, one has to laugh precisely because of the darkness: the nervous laughter of the trenches.
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The more dignity is widely and freely available in a society, the less people want to be famous.
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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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Never, ever become a writer. It's a nightmare.
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The good parent: someone who doesn't mind, for a time, being hated by their children.
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Maturity: the confidence to have no opinions on many things.
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At the heart of every frustration lies a basic structure: the collision of a wish with an unyielding reality.
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to design means forcing ourselves to unlearn what we believe we already know, patiently to take apart the mechanisms behind our reflexes and to acknowledge the mystery and stupefying complexity of everyday gestures like switching off a light of turning on a tap
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It is not necessarily at home that we best encounter our true selves. The furniture insists that we cannot change because it does not the domestic setting keeps us tethered to the person we are in ordinary life, who may not be who we essentially are.
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