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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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Alain de Botton
Age: 54
Born: 1969
Born: December 20
Journalist
Philosopher
Publisher
Writer
City of Zurich
Alain De Botton
Violate
Fury
Ground
Spring
Events
Greatest
Existence
Sense
Furies

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We read the weird tales in newspapers to crowd out the even weirder stuff inside us.
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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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Rather than saying 'I hate mess', it might draw more compassion to say, 'mess terrifies me as a harbinger of catastrophe'.
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The moment we cry in a film is not when things are sad but when they turn out to be more beautiful than we expected them to be.
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In the gap between who we wish one day to be and who we are at present, must come pain, anxiety, envy and humiliation.
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To be shown love is to feel ourselves the object of concern: our presence is noted, our name is registered, our views are listened to, our failings are treated with indulgence and our needs are ministered to. And under such care, we flourish.
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It is perhaps sad books that best console us when we are sad, and to lonely service stations that we should drive when there is no one for us to hold or love.
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Rather than getting more spoilt with age, as difficulties pile up, epiphanies of gratitude abound.
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The good parent: someone who doesn't mind, for a time, being hated by their children.
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Our disrespect for thinking: someone sitting in a chair, gazing out of a window blankly, always described as 'doing nothing'.
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We used to build temples, and museums are about as close as secular society dares to go in facing up to the idea that a good building can change your life (and a bad one ruin it).
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Endeavoring to purchase something we think beautiful may in fact be the most unimaginative way of dealing with the longing it excites in us, just as trying to sleep with someone may be the bluntest response to a feeling of love.
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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.
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A lump rises in our throat at the sight of beauty from an implicit knowledge that the happiness it hints at is the exception.
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Choosing a spouse and a choosing career: the two great decisions for which society refuses to set up institutional guidance.
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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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Travel agents would be wiser to ask us what we hope to change about our lives rather than simply where we wish to go.
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For all his understanding of worldly concerns, when it came to fathoming the deeper meaning of his own furious activity, Sir Bob displayed the sort of laziness for which he himself had no patience in others. He appeared to have only a passing interest in the overall purpose of his financial accumulation.
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Must being in love always mean being in pain?
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There are people who say, 'Oh this guy is quite thick.' I think the reason is that, increasingly, I don't mind being simple in terms of literary expression. Others say, 'No, no, no. He went to Cambridge. He got a good degree. He must be Einstein.'
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