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It is perhaps sad books that best console us when we are sad.

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
Books
Best
Book
Console
Sadness
Perhaps

More quotes by 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.
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Why, then, if expensive things cannot bring us remarkable joy, are we so powerfully drawn to them?
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Love is an incurable disease. In love, there is permanent suffering. Those who love and those who are happy are not the same.
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One of the unexpectedly important things that art can do for us is to teach us how to suffer more successfully.
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We keep a special place in our hearts for people who refuse to be impressed by us.
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We may not agree with what religions are trying to teach us, but we can admire the institutional way in which they're doing it.
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If we are inclined to forget how much there is in the world besides that which we anticipate, then works of art are perhaps a little to blame, for in them we find at work the same process of simplification or selection as in the imagination.
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One of our major flaws, and causes of unhappiness, is that we find it hard to take note of appreciate and be grateful for what is always around us. We suffer because we lose sight of the value of what is before us and yearn, often unfairly, for the imagined attraction elsewhere.
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Not everyone is worth listening to.
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Arguments are like eels: however logical, they may slip from the minds weak grasp unless fixed there by imagery and style.
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...if the beginnings of love and amorous politics are equally rosy, then the ends may be equally bloody.
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On paper, being good sounds great but a lot depends on the atmosphere of the workplace or community we live in. We tend to become good or bad depending on the cues sent out within a particular space.
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Socrates, on being insulted in the marketplace, asked by a passerby, Don't you worry about being called names? retorted, Why? Do you think I should resent it if an ass had kicked me?
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Although I don't believe in God, Bach's music shows me what a love of God must feel like.
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A great writer picks up on those things that matter. It’s almost like their radar is attuned to the most significant moments.
Alain de Botton
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It would scarcely be acceptable, for example, to ask in the course of an ordinary conversation what our society holds to be the purpose of work.
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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
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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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The good parent: someone who doesn't mind, for a time, being hated by their children.
Alain de Botton
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We feel something, and reach out for the nearest phrase or hum with which to communicate, but which fails to do justice to what has induced us to do so....We stay on the outside of our impressions, as if staring at them through a frosted window, superficially related to them, yet estranged from whatever has eluded casual definition.
Alain de Botton