Quote

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

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Alain de Botton
Age: 54
Born: 1969
Born: December 20
Journalist
Philosopher
Publisher
Writer
City of Zurich
Alain De Botton
Career
Careers
Choices
Precipitates
Self
Ward
Writing
Medication
Time
Madness
Meant
Choice

More quotes by Alain de Botton

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I am conscious of trying to stretch the boundaries of non-fiction writing. It's always surprised me how little attention many non-fiction writers pay to the formal aspects of their work.
Alain de Botton
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The only possible way to begin a book is to tell oneself that its eventual failure is guaranteed — but survivable.
Alain de Botton
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A world where a majority had imbibed the lessons implicit within tragic art would be one in which the consequences of our failures would necessarily cease to weigh upon us so heavily.
Alain de Botton
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To be shown love is to feel ourselves the object of concern: our presence is noted, our name is registered, our views are listened to, our failings are treated with indulgence and our needs are ministered to. And under such care, we flourish.
Alain de Botton
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In the gap between who we wish one day to be and who we are at present, must come pain, anxiety, envy and humiliation.
Alain de Botton
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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.
Alain de Botton
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Work is most fulfilling when you're at the comfortable, exciting edge of not quite knowing what you are doing.
Alain de Botton
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When you look at the Moon, you think, ‘I’m really small. What are my problems?’ It sets things into perspective. We should all look at the Moon a bit more often.
Alain de Botton
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Architects themselves tend to shy away from the word, preferring instead to talk about the manipulation of space.
Alain de Botton
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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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The only way to be happy is to realise how much depends on how you look at things
Alain de Botton
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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.
Alain de Botton
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The more closely we analyze what we consider 'sexy,' the more clearly we will understand that eroticism is the feeling of excitement we experience at finding another human being who shares our values and our sense of the meaning of existence.
Alain de Botton
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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.
Alain de Botton
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It seems that most of us could benefit from a brush with a near-fatal disaster to help us recognise the important things that we are too defeated or embittered to recognise from day to day.
Alain de Botton
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One rarely falls in love without being as much attracted to what is interestingly wrong with someone as what is objectively healthy.
Alain de Botton
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Artistic accounts involve severe abbreviations of what reality will force upon us.
Alain de Botton
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Sublime places repeat in grand terms a lesson that ordinary life typically teaches viciously: that the universe is mightier than we are, that we are frail and temporary and have no alternative but to accept limitations on our will that we must bow to necessities greater than ourselves.
Alain de Botton
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A good half of the art of living is resilience.
Alain de Botton
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The fear of saying something stupid (which stupid people never have) has censored far more good ideas than bad ones.
Alain de Botton