Quote

The very act of drawing an object, however badly, swiftly takes the drawer from a woolly sense of what the object looks like to a precise awareness of its component parts and particularities.

Alain de Botton

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Alain de Botton
Age: 55
Born: 1969
Born: December 20
Journalist
Philosopher
Publisher
Writer
City of Zurich
Alain De Botton
Looks
Drawing
Woolly
Like
Object
Drawer
Parts
Swiftly
However
Drawers
Awareness
Component
Objects
Components
Takes
Precise
Sense
Badly

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One of the best protections against disappointment is to have a lot going on.
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Writing a book has about it some of the anxiety of telling a joke and having to wait several years to know whether or not it was funny.
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The company of certain people may excite our generosity and sensitivity, while that of others awakens our competitiveness and envy.
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Alcohol-inspired fights are a reminder of the price we pay for our daily submission at the altars of prudence and order.
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My writing always came out of a very personal place, out of an attempt to stay sane.
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Choosing a spouse and a choosing career: the two great decisions for which society refuses to set up institutional guidance.
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If we are inclined to forget how much there is in the world besides that which we anticipate, then works of art are perhaps a little to blame, for in them we find at work the same process of simplification or selection as in the imagination.
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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.
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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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It's clear to me that there is no good reason for many philosophy books to sound as complicated as they do.
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Responsible for wrapping the iron fist of authority in its velvet glove is Jane Axtell, head of the accountancy firm's Human Resources department.
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Unhappiness can stem from having only one perspective to play with.
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What is a snob? A snob is anybody who takes a small part of you and uses that to come to a complete vision of who you are. That is snobbery.
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What am I supposed to do here? What am I supposed to think?
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The longing for a destiny is no nowhere stronger than in our romantic life. All too often forced to share our bed with those who cannot fathom our soul, can we not be forgiven if we believe ourselves fated to stumble one day upon the man or woman of our dreams.
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Being funny should be an incidental byproduct of trying to get to something truthful, not a destination in itself.
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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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It would be foolish to describe the logistics hub as merely ugly, for it has the horrifying, soulless, immaculate beauty characteristic of many of the workplaces of the modern world.
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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.
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Serious journalists often imagine society is adrift because people don't know certain things. Yet often, they know but just don't care. So the task of serious journalism isn't just to lay out truths. It is to make vital truths compelling to a big audience.
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