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

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Bad art might be defined as a series of bad choices about what to show and what to leave out.
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It would scarcely be acceptable, for example, to ask in the course of an ordinary conversation what our society holds to be the purpose of work.
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Do you love me enough that I may be weak with you? Everyone loves strength, but do you love me for my weakness? That is the real test.
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Our responses to the world are crucially moulded by the company we keep, for we temper our curiosity to fit in with the expectations of others.
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One of the best protections against disappointment is to have a lot going on.
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Taking architecture seriously therefore makes some singular and strenuous demands upon us...It means conceding that we are inconveniently vulnerable to the colour of our wallpaper and that our sense of purpose may be derailed by an unfortunate bedspread
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We are sad at home and blame the weather and the ugliness of the buildings, but on the tropical island we learn that the state of the skies and the appearance of our dwellings can never on their own underwrite our joy nor condemn us to misery.
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A great writer picks up on those things that matter. It’s almost like their radar is attuned to the most significant moments.
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Everyone returns us to a different sense of ourselves, for we become a little of who they think we are.
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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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I thought about societies where exceptional fortunes are built up in industries with very little connection to out sincere and significant needs, industries where it is difficult to escape from the disparity between a seriousness of means and a triviality of ends.
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Philosophy had supplied Socrates with convictions in which he had been able to have rational, as opposed to hysterical, confidence when faced with disapproval.
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One of the better guarantors of ending up in a good relationship: an advanced capacity to be alone.
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A 'good job' can be both practically attractive while still not good enough to devote your entire life to.
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True respectability stems not from the will of the majority but from proper reasoning.
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Don't despair: despair suggests you are in total control and know what is coming. You don't - surrender to events with hope.
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Art cannot single-handedly create enthusiasm... it merely contributes to enthusiasm and guides us to be more conscious of feelings that we might previously have experienced only tentatively or hurriedly.
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As we write, so we build: to keep a record of what matters to us.
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Every realistic picture represents a choice as to which features of reality should be given prominence no painting ever captures the whole.
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