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Rather than employing it as a supplement to active, conscious seeing, they used the medium as a substitute, paying less attention to the world than they had done previously, taking it on faith that photography automatically assured them possession of it.

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
Attention
Mediums
Supplements
Rather
Paying
Employing
Less
Possession
Previously
Faith
Active
Automatically
Used
Photography
Substitute
Done
Conscious
Assured
World
Taking
Substitutes
Seeing
Medium
Supplement

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Much of the really serious trouble in the world gets going with a sense of humiliation.
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The dream of the news is that it makes us care about other people and situations. But we cannot identify with people to whom we haven't been introduced. Humans will only respond to art, to people who are skilled in making you care.
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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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As adults, we try to develop the character traits that would have rescued our parents.
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Architects themselves tend to shy away from the word, preferring instead to talk about the manipulation of space.
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what we call a home is merely any place that succeeds in making more consistenly available to us the important truths which the wider world ignores, or which our distracted and irresolute selves have trouble holding onto. (p123) Architecture of Happiness
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Literature deserves its prestige for one reason above all others - because it's a tool to help us live and die with a little bit more wisdom, goodness, and sanity.
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One of the best protections against disappointment is to have a lot going on.
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Journeys are the midwives of thought. Few places are more conducive to internal conversations than moving planes, ships or trains.
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It is striking how much more seriously we are likely to be taken after we have been dead a few centuries.
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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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Wealth is not an absolute. It is relative to desire. Every time we yearn for something we cannot afford, we grow poorer, whatever our resources. And 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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Forcing people to eat together is an effective way to promote tolerance.
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I am in general a very pessimistic person with an optimistic, day to day take on things. The bare facts of life are utterly terrifying. And yet, one can laugh. Indeed, one has to laugh precisely because of the darkness: the nervous laughter of the trenches.
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A simple problem of arithmetic: there are far more ambitions than there are grand destinies available.
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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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Every realistic picture represents a choice as to which features of reality should be given prominence no painting ever captures the whole.
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The greatest works of art speak to us without knowing us.
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The mind may be reluctant to think properly when thinking is all it is supposed to do the task can be as paralysing as having to tell a joke or mimic an accent on demand.
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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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