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Responsible for wrapping the iron fist of authority in its velvet glove is Jane Axtell, head of the accountancy firm's Human Resources department.

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
Head
Fists
Human
Jane
Humans
Iron
Department
Glove
Firm
Wrapping
Responsible
Fist
Resources
Velvet
Authority
Gloves

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Must being in love always mean being in pain?
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What we find exotic abroad may be what we hunger for in vain at home.
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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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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?
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It is not just nature that defies us. Human life is as overwhelming... If we spend time in it [the vast spaces of nature], they may help us to accept more graciously the great, unfathomable events that molest our lives and will inevitably return us to dust.
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to design means forcing ourselves to unlearn what we believe we already know, patiently to take apart the mechanisms behind our reflexes and to acknowledge the mystery and stupefying complexity of everyday gestures like switching off a light of turning on a tap
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The good parent: someone who doesn't mind, for a time, being hated by their children.
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Many moments in religion seem attractive to me even though I can't believe in any of it.
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Our greatest furies spring from events which violate our sense of the ground of our existence.
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There is no such thing as work-life balance. Everything worth fighting for unbalances your life.
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What is fascinating about marriage is why anyone wants to get married.
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It is no coincidence that the Western attraction to sublime landscapes developed at precisely the moment when traditional beliefs in God began to wane.
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Every time we feel satisfied with what we have, we can be counted as rich, however little we may actually possess.
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The inability to live in the present lies in the fear of leaving the sheltered position of anticipation or memory, and so of admitting that this is the only life that one is ever likely (heavenly intervention aside) to live.
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I feel that the great challenge of our time is the communication of ideas.
Alain de Botton
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I'm also interested in the modern suggestion that you can have a combination of love and sex in a marriage - which no previous society has ever believed.
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We often lose our tempers not with those who are actually to blame just with those who love us enough to forgive us our foul moods.
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Paying tax should be framed as a glorious civic duty worthy of gratitude - not a punishment for making money.
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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.
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Our responses to the world are crucially moulded by the company we keep, for we temper our curiosity to fit in with the expectations of others.
Alain de Botton