Quote

Art cannot single-handedly create enthusiasm... it merely contributes to enthusiasm and guides us to be more conscious of feelings that we might previously have experienced only tentatively or hurriedly.

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
Cannot
Guides
Might
Enthusiasm
Merely
Hurriedly
Conscious
Tentatively
Single
Handedly
Create
Contributes
Feelings
Previously
Art
Experienced

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Most of us still caged within careers chosen for us by our not entirely worldly 18-22 year old selves.
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By travelling across frontiers, on horseback and in the imagination, Montaigne invited us to to exchange local prejudices and the self division they induced for less constraining identities as citizens of the world.
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Booksellers are the most valuable destination for the lonely, given the numbers of books that were written because authors couldn't find anyone to talk to.
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On paper, being good sounds great but a lot depends on the atmosphere of the workplace or community we live in. We tend to become good or bad depending on the cues sent out within a particular space.
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The genius of religions is that they structure the inner life.
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We should not feel embarrassed by our difficulties, only by our failure to grow anything beautiful from them.
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Being content is perhaps no less easy than playing the violin well: and requires no less practice.
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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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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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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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The materialistic view of happiness of our age starkly revealed in our understanding of the word luxury.
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We may seek a fortune for no greater reason than to secure the respect and attention of people who would otherwise look straight through us.
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The only people we can think of as normal are those we don't yet know very well.
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Most good thinking has its origin in fear.
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Everyone wants a better life: very few of us want to be better people.
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One rarely falls in love without being as much attracted to what is interestingly wrong with someone as what is objectively healthy.
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Being incomprehensible offers unparalleled protection against having nothing to say...but writing with simplicity requires courage, for there is a danger that one will be overlooked, dismissed as simpleminded by those with a tenacious belief that the impassable prose is a hallmark of intelligence.
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Only as we mature does affection begin to depend on achievement.
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You have to be quite heavily invested in someone to do them the honour of telling them you're annoyed with them.
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I passionately believe that's it's not just what you say that counts, it's also how you say it - that the success of your argument critically depends on your manner of presenting it.
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