Quote

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.

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
Artist
Noticed
Place
Define
Landscape
Come
Greatness
Without
Result
Selections
Great
Travel
Acute
Longer
Reminded
Results
Selection

More quotes by Alain de Botton

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To look at the paper is to raise a seashell to one's ear and to be overwhelmed by the roar of humanity.
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Anxiety is the handmaiden of contemporary ambition.
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Many moments in religion seem attractive to me even though I can't believe in any of it.
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The telephone becomes an instrument of torture in the demonic hands of a beloved who doesn't call.
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Sublime places repeat in grand terms a lesson that ordinary life typically teaches viciously: that the universe is mightier than we are, that we are frail and temporary and have no alternative but to accept limitations on our will that we must bow to necessities greater than ourselves.
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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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Our jobs make relentless calls on a narrow band of our faculties, reducing our chances of achieving rounded personalities and leaving us to suspect (often in the gathering darkness of a Sunday evening) that much of who we are, or could be, has gone unexplored.
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Writing isn’t a career choice. It’s self-medication that over time precipitates the madness it was meant to ward off.
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To be shown love is to feel ourselves the object of concern: our presence is noted, our name is registered, our views are listened to, our failings are treated with indulgence and our needs are ministered to. And under such care, we flourish.
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We are presented with an unpleasant choice between either committing to peculiar concepts about immaterial deities or letting go entirely of a host of consoling, subtle or just charming rituals for which we struggle to find equivalents in secular society.
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The more familiar two people become, the more the language they speak together departs from that of the ordinary, dictionary-defined discourse. Familiarity creates a new language, an in-house language of intimacy that carries reference to the story the two lovers are weaving together and that cannot be readily understood by others.
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Memory is... similar to anticipation: an instrument of simplification and selection.
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In their different ways, art and philosophy help us, in Schopenhauer's words, to turn pain into knowledge.
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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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We will cease to be angry once we cease to be so hopeful.
Alain de Botton
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The problem is if you really believe in a society where those who merit to get to the top, get to the top, you’ll also, by implication … believe in a society where those who deserve to get to the bottom also get to the bottom and stay there.
Alain de Botton
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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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Not being understood may be taken as a sign that there is much in one to understand.
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Our disrespect for thinking: someone sitting in a chair, gazing out of a window blankly, always described as 'doing nothing'.
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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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