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Man seems merely dust postponed: the sublime as an encounter - pleasurable, intoxicating, even - with human weakness in the face of strength, age and size of the universe.

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
Universe
Dust
Seems
Size
Human
Merely
Postponed
Humans
Weakness
Intoxicating
Even
Strength
Pleasurable
Men
Face
Encounter
Age
Sublime
Faces
Encounters

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Anxiety is the handmaiden of contemporary ambition.
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Perhaps it is true that we do not really exist until there is someone there to see us existing, we cannot properly speak until there is someone who can understand what we are saying in essence, we are not wholly alive until we are loved.
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The secular world is full of holes. We have secularized badly.
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Good sex isn't just fun, it keeps us sane and happy. Having sex with someone makes us feel wanted, alive and potent.
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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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Objectively good spaces to work rarely end up being so in their faultlessness, quiet and well-equipped studios have a habit of rendering the fear of failure overwhelming. Original thoughts are like shy animals. We sometimes have to look the other way - towards a busy street or terminal - before they run out of their burrows.
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We should not be frightened by appearances.
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An argument in a couple: 2 people attempting to introduce each other to important truths - by panicked shouting.
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Those who divorce aren't necessarily the most unhappy, just those neatly able to believe their misery is caused by one other person.
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Art holds out the promise of inner wholeness.
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True respectability stems not from the will of the majority but from proper reasoning.
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We are all more intelligent than we are capable, and awareness of the insanity of love has never saved anyone from the disease.
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Envy: a confused, tangled guide to one's own ambitions.
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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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We should read other people's books in order to learn what we feel it is our own thoughts we should be developing, even if it is another writer's thought that help us to do so.
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The more closely we analyze what we consider 'sexy,' the more clearly we will understand that eroticism is the feeling of excitement we experience at finding another human being who shares our values and our sense of the meaning of existence.
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The architects who benefit us most maybe those generous enough to lay aside their claims to genius in order to devote themselves to assembling graceful but predominantly unoriginal boxes. Architecture should have the confidence and the kindness to be a little boring.
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It wasn't only fanatics and drunkards who began conversations with strangers in public.
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Philosophy had supplied Socrates with convictions in which he had been able to have rational, as opposed to hysterical, confidence when faced with disapproval.
Alain de Botton
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We will cease to be angry once we cease to be so hopeful.
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