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There is a devilishly direct relationship between the significance of an idea and how nervous we become at the prospect of having to think about 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
Idea
Become
Ideas
Think
Prospect
Thinking
Significance
Nervous
Direct
Relationship

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Every adult life could be said to be defined by two great love stories: the story of our quest for sexual love and the story of our quest for love from the world.
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The dream of the news is that it makes us care about other people and situations. But we cannot identify with people to whom we haven't been introduced. Humans will only respond to art, to people who are skilled in making you care.
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Arguments are like eels: however logical, they may slip from the minds weak grasp unless fixed there by imagery and style.
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Why, then, if expensive things cannot bring us remarkable joy, are we so powerfully drawn to them?
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Perhaps it is true that we do not really exist until there is someone there to see us existing, we cannot properly speak until there is someone who can understand what we are saying in essence, we are not wholly alive until we are loved.
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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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I thought about societies where exceptional fortunes are built up in industries with very little connection to out sincere and significant needs, industries where it is difficult to escape from the disparity between a seriousness of means and a triviality of ends.
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What is fascinating about marriage is why anyone wants to get married.
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Our homes do not have to offer us permanent occupancy or store our clothes to merit the name. To speak of home in relation to a building is simply to recognise its harmony with our own prized internal song. Home can be an airport or a library, a garden or a motorway diner.
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Forgiveness requires a sense that bad behaviour is a sign of suffering rather than malice.
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Most victories are, in the best way, acts of revenge.
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Never too late to learn some embarrassingly basic, stupidly obvious things about oneself.
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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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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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I learnt to stop fantasising about the perfect job or the perfect relationship because that can actually be an excuse for not living.
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What we seek, at the deepest level, is inwardly to resemble, rather than physically to possess, the objects and places that touch us through their beauty.
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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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It's perhaps easier now than ever before to make a good living it's perhaps harder than ever before to stay calm, to be free of career anxiety.
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Forcing people to eat together is an effective way to promote tolerance.
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Love is an incurable disease. In love, there is permanent suffering. Those who love and those who are happy are not the same.
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