Quote

Every realistic picture represents a choice as to which features of reality should be given prominence no painting ever captures the whole.

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
Given
Represents
Reality
Realistic
Ever
Capture
Whole
Features
Every
Picture
Choice
Prominence
Painting
Captures
Choices
Realism

More quotes by Alain de Botton

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You have to be quite heavily invested in someone to do them the honour of telling them you're annoyed with them.
Alain de Botton
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I learnt to stop fantasising about the perfect job or the perfect relationship because that can actually be an excuse for not living.
Alain de Botton
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You normally have to be bashed about a bit by life to see the point of daffodils, sunsets and uneventful nice days.
Alain de Botton
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The problem isn't so much finding good ideas (there is no shortage) as embedding the ones we have into everyday practice.
Alain de Botton
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It's very hard to respect people on holiday - everybody looks so silly at the beach, it makes you hate humanity - but when you see people at their work they elicit respect, whether it's a mechanic, a stonemason or an accountant.
Alain de Botton
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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.
Alain de Botton
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Forgiveness requires a sense that bad behaviour is a sign of suffering rather than malice.
Alain de Botton
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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.
Alain de Botton
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Only as we mature does affection begin to depend on achievement.
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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The greatest works of art speak to us without knowing us.
Alain de Botton
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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.
Alain de Botton
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Because the rhythm of conversation makes no allowance for dead periods, because the presence of others calls for continuous responses, we are left to regret the inanity of what we say, and the missed opportunity of what we do not.
Alain de Botton
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The arrogance that says analysing the relationship between reasons and causes is more important than writing a philosophy of shyness or sadness or friendship drives me nuts. I can't accept that.
Alain de Botton
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We keep a special place in our hearts for people who refuse to be impressed by us.
Alain de Botton
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After 40 (old age for most of man's history), one should strive to be more or less packed and ready to go were the end call to come.
Alain de Botton
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In the works of Lucretius, we find two reasons why we shouldn't worry about death. If you have had a successful life, Lucretius tell us, there's no reason to mind its end. And, if you haven't had a good time, Why do you seek to add more years, which would also pass but ill?
Alain de Botton
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Work is most fulfilling when you're at the comfortable, exciting edge of not quite knowing what you are doing.
Alain de Botton
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Let's say you went to Harvard or Oxford or Cambridge, and you said, 'I've come here because I'm in search of morality, guidance and consolation I want to know how to live,' - they would show you the way to the insane asylum.
Alain de Botton
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Our capacity to draw happiness from aesthetic objects or material goods in fact seems critically dependent on our first satisfying a more important range of emotional or psychological needs, among them the need for understanding, for love, expression and respect.
Alain de Botton