Quote

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.

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
Hence
Lack
Valuable
Simply
Perpetually
Sense
Distorted
Everything
Radically
Must
Tedious
Condemn

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Happiness may be difficult to obtain. The obstacles are not primarily financial.
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We are certainly influenced by role models, and if we are surrounded by images of beautiful rich people, we will start to think that to be beautiful and rich is very important - just as in the Middle Ages, people were surrounded by images of religious piety.
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I assemble my ideas in pieces on a computer file, then gradually find a place for them on a piece of scaffolding I erect.
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According to Montaigne, it was the oppressive notion that we had complete mental control over our bodies, and the horror of departing from this portrait of normality, that had left the man unable to perform sexually.
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The finest proof of our loyalty toward one another was our monstrous disloyalties towards everyone else.
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Intuition is unconscious accumulated experience informing judgement in real time.
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Work finally begins when the fear of doing nothing exceeds the fear of doing it badly.
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It is no coincidence that the Western attraction to sublime landscapes developed at precisely the moment when traditional beliefs in God began to wane.
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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.
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It is in dialogue with pain that many beautiful things acquire their value. Acquaintance with grief turns out to be one of the more unusual prerequisites of architectural appreciation. We might, quite aside from all other requirements, need to be a little sad before buildings can properly touch us.
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We need a home in the psychological sense as much as we need one in the physical: to compensate for a vulnerability. We need a refuge to shore up our states of mind, because so much of the world is opposed to our allegiances. We need our rooms to align us to desirable versions of ourselves and to keep alive the important, evanescent sides of us.
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The media insists on taking what someone didn't mean to say as being far closer to the truth than what they did.
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As we write, so we build: to keep a record of what matters to us.
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The blunt large questions become connected to smaller, apparently esoteric ones.
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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.
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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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People who go on to be writers are those who can forgive themselves the horror of the first draft.
Alain de Botton
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Paying tax should be framed as a glorious civic duty worthy of gratitude - not a punishment for making money.
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The mind may be reluctant to think properly when thinking is all it is supposed to do the task can be as paralysing as having to tell a joke or mimic an accent on demand.
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It is perhaps sad books that best console us when we are sad, and to lonely service stations that we should drive when there is no one for us to hold or love.
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