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The materialistic view of happiness of our age starkly revealed in our understanding of the word luxury.

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
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Views
Word
Understanding
Age
Starkly
Happiness
Materialistic
Revealed
Luxury

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The difference between hope and despair is a different way of telling stories from the same facts.
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After 40 (old age for most of man's history), one should strive to be more or less packed and ready to go were the end call to come.
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Art holds out the promise of inner wholeness.
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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.
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We read the weird tales in newspapers to crowd out the even weirder stuff inside us.
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The true nature of bureaucracy may be nowhere more obvious to the observer than in a developing country, for only there will it still be made manifest by the full complement of documents, files, veneered desks and cabinets - which convey the strict and inverse relationship between productivity and paperwork.
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Being incomprehensible offers unparalleled protection against having nothing to say...but writing with simplicity requires courage, for there is a danger that one will be overlooked, dismissed as simpleminded by those with a tenacious belief that the impassable prose is a hallmark of intelligence.
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Pegging your contentment to the overall state of the world rather than of your own life: the basis of morality, or a sort of madness?
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The architects who benefit us most maybe those generous enough to lay aside their claims to genius in order to devote themselves to assembling graceful but predominantly unoriginal boxes. Architecture should have the confidence and the kindness to be a little boring.
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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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In Britain, because I live here, I can also run into problems of envy and competition. But all this is just in a day's work for a writer. You can't put stuff out there without someone calling you a complete fool. Oh, well.
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Good sex isn't just fun, it keeps us sane and happy. Having sex with someone makes us feel wanted, alive and potent.
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We used to build temples, and museums are about as close as secular society dares to go in facing up to the idea that a good building can change your life (and a bad one ruin it).
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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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Everyone returns us to a different sense of ourselves, for we become a little of who they think we are.
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Curiosity takes ignorance seriously - and is confident enough to admit when it's in the dark. It is aware of not knowing. And then it sets out to do something about it.
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Our disrespect for thinking: someone sitting in a chair, gazing out of a window blankly, always described as 'doing nothing'.
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A virtuous, ordinary life, striving for wisdom but never far from folly, is achievement enough.
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Our sense of what is valuable will hence be radically distorted if we must perpetually condemn as tedious everything we lack, simply because we lack it.
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Most of what makes a book 'good' is that we are reading it at the right moment for us.
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