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Without sex, we would be dangerously invulnerable. We might believe we were not ridiculous. We wouldn't know rejection and humiliation so intimately.

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
Sex
Wouldn
Might
Invulnerable
Without
Dangerously
Believe
Intimately
Would
Humiliation
Rejection
Ridiculous

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The activities of drawing, eating and drinking, all involve assimilations by the self of desirable elements from the world, a transfer of goodness from without to within.
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There are selections so acute that they come to define a place, with the result that we can no longer travel through that landscape without being reminded of what a great artist noticed there.
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Bitterness: anger that forgot where it came from.
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If our lives are dominated by a search for happiness, then perhaps few activities reveal as much about the dynamics of this quest - in all its ardour and paradoxes - than our travels.
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Never too late to learn some embarrassingly basic, stupidly obvious things about oneself.
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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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Most of our childhood is stored not in photos, but in certain biscuits, lights of day, smells, textures of carpet.
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I was foreign and Jewish, with a funny name, and was very small and hated sport, a real problem at an English prep school. So the way to get round it was to become the school joker, which I did quite effectively - I was always fooling around to make the people who would otherwise dump me in the loo laugh.
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The largest part of what we call 'personality' is determined by how we've opted to defend ourselves against anxiety and sadness.
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A successful work will draw out the features capable of exciting a sense of beauty and interest in the spectator.
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You normally have to be bashed about a bit by life to see the point of daffodils, sunsets and uneventful nice days.
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One of love's greatest drawbacks is that, for a while at least, it is in danger of making us happy.
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Endeavoring to purchase something we think beautiful may in fact be the most unimaginative way of dealing with the longing it excites in us, just as trying to sleep with someone may be the bluntest response to a feeling of love.
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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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Unhappiness can stem from having only one perspective to play with.
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The desire for high status is never stronger than in situations where ordinary life fails to answer a median need for dignity and comfort.
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At the heart of every frustration lies a basic structure: the collision of a wish with an unyielding reality.
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Forgiveness requires a sense that bad behaviour is a sign of suffering rather than malice.
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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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A notorious inability to express emotions makes human beings the only animals capable of suicide.
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