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The blunt large questions become connected to smaller, apparently esoteric ones.

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
Become
Esoteric
Blunt
Apparently
Smaller
Connected
Questions
Large
Ones

More quotes by Alain de Botton

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According to Montaigne, it was the oppressive notion that we had complete mental control over our bodies, and the horror of departing from this portrait of normality, that had left the man unable to perform sexually.
Alain de Botton
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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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We need objects to remind us of the commitments we've made. That carpet from Morocco reminds us of the impulsive, freedom-loving side of ourselves we're in danger of losing touch with. Beautiful furniture gives us something to live up to. All designed objects are propaganda for a way of life.
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When work is not going well, it's useful to remember that our identities stretch beyond what is on the business card, that we were people long before we became workers - and will continue to be human once we have put our tools down forever.
Alain de Botton
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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.
Alain de Botton
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What is a snob? A snob is anybody who takes a small part of you and uses that to come to a complete vision of who you are. That is snobbery.
Alain de Botton
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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.
Alain de Botton
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Intuition is unconscious accumulated experience informing judgement in real time.
Alain de Botton
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There is psychological pleasure in this takeoff, too, for the swiftness of the plane’s ascent is an exemplary symbol of transformation. The display of power can inspire us to imagine analogous, decisive shifts in our own lives, to imagine that we, too, might one day surge above much that now looms over us.” P. 38-39
Alain de Botton
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Being content is perhaps no less easy than playing the violin well: and requires no less practice.
Alain de Botton
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Intimacy is the capacity to be rather weird with someone - and finding that that's ok with them.
Alain de Botton
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I'm also interested in the modern suggestion that you can have a combination of love and sex in a marriage - which no previous society has ever believed.
Alain de Botton
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We accept the need to train extensively to fly a plane but think instinct should be enough for marrying and raising kids.
Alain de Botton
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Life gives us no such handy markers - a storm comes, and far from this being a harbinger of death and collapse, during its course a person discovers love and truth, beauty and happiness, the rain lashing at the windows all the while.
Alain de Botton
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Bitterness: anger that forgot where it came from.
Alain de Botton
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Our greatest furies spring from events which violate our sense of the ground of our existence.
Alain de Botton
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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.
Alain de Botton
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Everyone wants a better life: very few of us want to be better people.
Alain de Botton
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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.
Alain de Botton
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It is perhaps when our lives are at their most problematic that we are likely to be most receptive to beautiful things.
Alain de Botton