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We should not feel embarrassed by our difficulties, only by our failure to grow anything beautiful from 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
Feel
Difficulties
Feels
Embarrassed
Difficulty
Failure
Grow
Grows
Beautiful
Anything

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Not being understood may be taken as a sign that there is much in one to understand.
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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 are continuously challenged to discover new works of culture—and, in the process, we don’t allow any one of them to assume a weight in our minds.
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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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The study of maps and the perusal of travel books aroused in me a secret fascination that was at times almost irresistible.
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I passionately believe that's it's not just what you say that counts, it's also how you say it - that the success of your argument critically depends on your manner of presenting it.
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We are presented with an unpleasant choice between either committing to peculiar concepts about immaterial deities or letting go entirely of a host of consoling, subtle or just charming rituals for which we struggle to find equivalents in secular society.
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We accept the need to train extensively to fly a plane but think instinct should be enough for marrying and raising kids.
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It wasn't only fanatics and drunkards who began conversations with strangers in public.
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The materialistic view of happiness of our age starkly revealed in our understanding of the word luxury.
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It is perhaps sad books that best console us when we are sad.
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The degree of sympathy we feel regarding another's fiasco is directly proportional to how easy or difficult it is for us to imagine ourselves, under like circumstances, making a similar mistake.
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Most anger stems from feelings of weakness, sadness and fear: hard to remember when one is at the receiving end of its defiant roar.
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Never, ever become a writer. It's a nightmare.
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The blunt large questions become connected to smaller, apparently esoteric ones.
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If our lives are dominated by a search for happiness, then perhaps few activities reveal as much about the dynamics of this quest - in all its ardour and paradoxes - than our travels.
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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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In a secularising world, art has replaced religion as a touchstone of our reverence and devotion.
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Curiosity might be pictured as being made up of chains of small questions extending outwards, sometimes over huge distances, from a central hub composed of a few blunt, large questions.
Alain de Botton
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Our disrespect for thinking: someone sitting in a chair, gazing out of a window blankly, always described as 'doing nothing'.
Alain de Botton