Quote

Our disrespect for thinking: someone sitting in a chair, gazing out of a window blankly, always described as 'doing nothing'.

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
Chair
Chairs
Window
Sitting
Someone
Blankly
Nothing
Gazing
Always
Disrespect
Thinking
Described

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The telephone becomes an instrument of torture in the demonic hands of a beloved who doesn't call.
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People who readily accept the need for a gym will resist that their personalities might need some work too.
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We are sensitized by the books we read. And the more books we read, and the deeper their lessons sink into us, the more pairs of glasses we have. And those glasses enable us to see things we would have otherwise missed.
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Her lie was symptomatic of a certain pride she took in mocking the romantic, in being unsentimental, matter-of-fact, stoic yet at heart she was the oppo site: idealistic, dreamy, giving, and deeply attached to everything she liked verbally to dismiss as mushy.
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what we call a home is merely any place that succeeds in making more consistenly available to us the important truths which the wider world ignores, or which our distracted and irresolute selves have trouble holding onto. (p123) Architecture of Happiness
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A 'good job' can be both practically attractive while still not good enough to devote your entire life to.
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Wealth is not an absolute. It is relative to desire. Every time we yearn for something we cannot afford, we grow poorer, whatever our resources. And every time we feel satisfied with what we have, we can be counted as rich, however little we may actually possess.
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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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Most of our childhood is stored not in photos, but in certain biscuits, lights of day, smells, textures of carpet.
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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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I went to church and couldn't swallow it. The music was nice but I don't belong there.
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To look at the paper is to raise a seashell to one's ear and to be overwhelmed by the roar of humanity.
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The greatest difficulty of Travel is that one is forced to take oneself along.
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Happiness is impossible for longer than 15 minutes. We are the descendants of creatures who, above all else, worried.
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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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Happiness may be difficult to obtain. The obstacles are not primarily financial.
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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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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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When I see someone like Richard Dawkins, I see my father. I grew up with that. I'm basically the child of Richard Dawkins.
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Bitterness: anger that forgot where it came from.
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