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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.
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
Perhaps
Dominated
Happiness
Quests
Lives
Quest
Much
Reveal
Paradox
Ardour
Activities
Paradoxes
Search
Travels
Activity
Dynamics
More quotes by Alain de Botton
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.
Alain de Botton
Forcing people to eat together is an effective way to promote tolerance.
Alain de Botton
The universe is large and we are tiny, without the need for further religious superstructure. One can have so-called spiritual moments without belief in the spirit.
Alain de Botton
Those who divorce aren't necessarily the most unhappy, just those neatly able to believe their misery is caused by one other person.
Alain de Botton
Maturity: knowing where you're crazy, trying to warn others of the fact and striving to keep yourself under control.
Alain de Botton
The materialistic view of happiness of our age starkly revealed in our understanding of the word luxury.
Alain de Botton
Most anger stems from feelings of weakness, sadness and fear: hard to remember when one is at the receiving end of its defiant roar.
Alain de Botton
It is striking how much more seriously we are likely to be taken after we have been dead a few centuries.
Alain de Botton
People only get really interesting when they start to rattle the bars of their cages.
Alain de Botton
It is in dialogue with pain that many beautiful things acquire their value. Acquaintance with grief turns out to be one of the more unusual prerequisites of architectural appreciation. We might, quite aside from all other requirements, need to be a little sad before buildings can properly touch us.
Alain de Botton
True respectability stems not from the will of the majority but from proper reasoning.
Alain de Botton
I am conscious of trying to stretch the boundaries of non-fiction writing. It's always surprised me how little attention many non-fiction writers pay to the formal aspects of their work.
Alain de Botton
Being content is perhaps no less easy than playing the violin well: and requires no less practice.
Alain de Botton
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.
Alain de Botton
Good books put a finger on emotions that are deeply our own - but that we could never have described on our own.
Alain de Botton
The degree of sympathy we feel regarding another's fiasco is directly proportional to how easy or difficult it is for us to imagine ourselves, under like circumstances, making a similar mistake.
Alain de Botton
A world where a majority had imbibed the lessons implicit within tragic art would be one in which the consequences of our failures would necessarily cease to weigh upon us so heavily.
Alain de Botton
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.
Alain de Botton
The blunt large questions become connected to smaller, apparently esoteric ones.
Alain de Botton
One of the better guarantors of ending up in a good relationship: an advanced capacity to be alone.
Alain de Botton
