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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.

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
Without
Activities
Self
Drawing
World
Drinking
Goodness
Assimilation
Elements
Transfer
Eating
Transfers
Activity
Involve
Within
Desirable

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We will cease to be angry once we cease to be so hopeful.
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A notorious inability to express emotions makes human beings the only animals capable of suicide.
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The happiness that may emerge from taking a second look is central to Proust's therapeutic conception. It reveals the extent to which our dissatisfactions may be the result of failing to look properly at our lives rather than the result of anything inherently deficient about them.
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A dominant impulse on encountering beauty is to wish to hold on to it, to possess it and give it weight in one’s life. There is an urge to say, ‘I was here, I saw this and it mattered to me.
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It's hard loving those who don't much like themselves: If you're so great, why would you think I'm so great.
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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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Despite its maddeningly vague, inarticulate form, anxiety is almost always trying to tell you something useful and apposite.
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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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There is a longing for a return to a time without the need for choices, free of the regret at the inevitable loss that all choice (however wonderful) has entailed.
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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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The fear of saying something stupid (which stupid people never have) has censored far more good ideas than bad ones.
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As victims of hurt, we frequently don't bring up what ails us, because so many wounds look absurd in the light of day.
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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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Maturity: the confidence to have no opinions on many things.
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The moment we cry in a film is not when things are sad but when they turn out to be more beautiful than we expected them to be.
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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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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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