Quote

Journeys are the midwives of thought. Few places are more conducive to internal conversations than moving planes, ships or trains.

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
Ships
Midwife
Train
Conducive
Places
Journeys
Conversation
Trains
Journey
Conversations
Moving
Internals
Thought
Internal
Planes
Midwives

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Sweetness is the opposite of machismo, which is everywhere-and I really don't get on with machismo. I'm interested in sensitivity, and weakness, and fear, and anxiety, because I think that, at the end of the day, behind our masks, that's what we are.
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Although I don't believe in God, Bach's music shows me what a love of God must feel like.
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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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Good books put a finger on emotions that are deeply our own - but that we could never have described on our own.
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In a secularising world, art has replaced religion as a touchstone of our reverence and devotion.
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We should read other people's books in order to learn what we feel it is our own thoughts we should be developing, even if it is another writer's thought that help us to do so.
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True love is a lack of desire to check one's smartphone in another's presence.
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What am I supposed to do here? What am I supposed to think?
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Architects themselves tend to shy away from the word, preferring instead to talk about the manipulation of space.
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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's hard loving those who don't much like themselves: If you're so great, why would you think I'm so great.
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What kills us isn't one big thing, but thousands of tiny obligations we can't turn down for fear of disappointing others.
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Mental health: having enough safe places in your mind for your thoughts to settle.
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One of our major flaws, and causes of unhappiness, is that we find it hard to take note of appreciate and be grateful for what is always around us. We suffer because we lose sight of the value of what is before us and yearn, often unfairly, for the imagined attraction elsewhere.
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Taking photographs can assuage the itch for possession sparked by the beauty of a place our anxiety over losing a precious scene can decline with every click of the shutter.
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People only get really interesting when they start to rattle the bars of their cages.
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A danger of travel is that we see things at the wrong time, before we have had a chance to build up the necessary receptivity and when new information is therefore as useless and fugitive as necklace beads without a connecting chain.
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The lesson? To respond to the unexpected and hurtful behavior of others with something more than a wipe of the glasses, to see it as a chance to expand our understanding.
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The attentions of others matter to us because we are afflicted by a congenital uncertainty as to our own value, as a result of which affliction we tend to allow others' appraisals to play a determining role in how we see ourselves. Our sense of identity is held captive by the judgements of those we live among.
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For all his understanding of worldly concerns, when it came to fathoming the deeper meaning of his own furious activity, Sir Bob displayed the sort of laziness for which he himself had no patience in others. He appeared to have only a passing interest in the overall purpose of his financial accumulation.
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