Quote

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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Alain de Botton
Age: 54
Born: 1969
Born: December 20
Journalist
Philosopher
Publisher
Writer
City of Zurich
Alain De Botton
Supposed
Reluctant
Demand
Accent
Tell
Accents
May
Properly
Mind
Joke
Think
Task
Thinking
Tasks
Paralysing
Jokes
Mimic

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One of the best protections against disappointment is to have a lot going on.
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Serious journalists often imagine society is adrift because people don't know certain things. Yet often, they know but just don't care. So the task of serious journalism isn't just to lay out truths. It is to make vital truths compelling to a big audience.
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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.
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Though it may feel otherwise, enjoying life is no more dangerous than apprehending it with continuous anxiety and gloom.
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Happiness is impossible for longer than 15 minutes. We are the descendants of creatures who, above all else, worried.
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As adults, we try to develop the character traits that would have rescued our parents.
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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
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I think people want to get married to end their emotional uncertainty. In a way, they want to end powerful feelings, or certainly the negative ones.
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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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Don't despair: despair suggests you are in total control and know what is coming. You don't - surrender to events with hope.
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People who go on to be writers are those who can forgive themselves the horror of the first draft.
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To one's enemies: I hate myself more than you ever could.
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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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Our minds are susceptible to the influence of external voices telling us what we require to be satisfied, voices that may drown out the faint sounds emitted by our souls and distract us from the careful, arduous task of accurately naming our priorities.
Alain de Botton
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It was no longer her absence that wounded me, but my growing indifference to it. Forgetting, however calming, was also a reminder of infidelity to what I had at one time held so dear.
Alain de Botton
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One kind of good book should leave you asking: how did the author know that about me?
Alain de Botton
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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.
Alain de Botton
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The activities of drawing, eating and drinking, all involve assimilations by the self of desirable elements from the world, a transfer of goodness from without to within.
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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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The telephone becomes an instrument of torture in the demonic hands of a beloved who doesn't call.
Alain de Botton