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What we find exotic abroad may be what we hunger for in vain at home.

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
May
Find
Exotic
Abroad
Vain
Hunger
Home

More quotes by Alain de Botton

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The telephone becomes an instrument of torture in the demonic hands of a beloved who doesn't call.
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Many moments in religion seem attractive to me even though I can't believe in any of it.
Alain de Botton
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Getting to the top has an unfortunate tendency to persuade people that the system is OK after all.
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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.
Alain de Botton
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He was marked out by his relentless ability to find fault with others' mediocrity - suggesting that a certain type of intelligence may be at heart nothing more or less than a superior capacity for dissatisfaction.
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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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Maturity: knowing where you're crazy, trying to warn others of the fact and striving to keep yourself under control.
Alain de Botton
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The largest part of what we call 'personality' is determined by how we've opted to defend ourselves against anxiety and sadness.
Alain de Botton
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Let death find us as we are building up our matchstick protests against its waves.
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I feel that the great challenge of our time is the communication of ideas.
Alain de Botton
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Good books put a finger on emotions that are deeply our own - but that we could never have described on our own.
Alain de Botton
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The longing for destiny is nowhere stronger than in our romantic life.
Alain de Botton
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How generous was it to offer gifts to people one knew would never accept them?
Alain de Botton
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The real issue is not whether baking biscuits is meaningful, but the extent to which the activity can seem to be so after it has been continuously stretched and subdivided across five thousand lives.
Alain de Botton
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We are all more intelligent than we are capable, and awareness of the insanity of love has never saved anyone from the disease.
Alain de Botton
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The more familiar two people become, the more the language they speak together departs from that of the ordinary, dictionary-defined discourse. Familiarity creates a new language, an in-house language of intimacy that carries reference to the story the two lovers are weaving together and that cannot be readily understood by others.
Alain de Botton
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A successful work will draw out the features capable of exciting a sense of beauty and interest in the spectator.
Alain de Botton
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Memory is... similar to anticipation: an instrument of simplification and selection.
Alain de Botton
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It is perhaps when our lives are at their most problematic that we are likely to be most receptive to beautiful things.
Alain de Botton
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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.
Alain de Botton