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: 54
Born: 1969
Born: December 20
Journalist
Philosopher
Publisher
Writer
City of Zurich
Alain De Botton
Results
Properly
Happiness
Conception
Deficient
Rather
Central
Proust
Lives
Extent
Therapeutic
Anything
Result
Dissatisfaction
May
Failing
Inherently
Look
Taking
Emerge
Looks
Second
Reveals

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Work finally begins when the fear of doing nothing exceeds the fear of doing it badly.
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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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Insomnia is a glamorous term for thoughts you forgot to have in the day.
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We keep a special place in our hearts for people who refuse to be impressed by us.
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So many complaints boil down to the belly ache of the fragile, mortal, ignored ego in a vast and indifferent universe.
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If one felt successful, there'd be so little incentive to be successful.
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The activities of drawing, eating and drinking, all involve assimilations by the self of desirable elements from the world, a transfer of goodness from without to within.
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You normally have to be bashed about a bit by life to see the point of daffodils, sunsets and uneventful nice days.
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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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As an atheist, I think there are lots of things religions get up to which are of value to non-believers - and one of those things is trying to be a bit better than we normally manage to be.
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Despite its maddeningly vague, inarticulate form, anxiety is almost always trying to tell you something useful and apposite.
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The longing for destiny is nowhere stronger than in our romantic life.
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One's doing well if age improves even slightly one's capacity to hold on to that vital truism: This too shall pass.
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We envy only those whom we feel ourselves to be like we envy only members of our reference group. There are few successes more unendurable than those of our close friends.
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When I see someone like Richard Dawkins, I see my father. I grew up with that. I'm basically the child of Richard Dawkins.
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Artistic accounts involve severe abbreviations of what reality will force upon us.
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Rather than saying 'I hate mess', it might draw more compassion to say, 'mess terrifies me as a harbinger of catastrophe'.
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It is in dialogue with pain that many beautiful things acquire their value. Acquaintance with grief turns out to be one of the more unusual prerequisites of architectural appreciation. We might, quite aside from all other requirements, need to be a little sad before buildings can properly touch us.
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Without sex, we would be dangerously invulnerable. We might believe we were not ridiculous. We wouldn't know rejection and humiliation so intimately.
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A simple problem of arithmetic: there are far more ambitions than there are grand destinies available.
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