Quote

Arguments are like eels: however logical, they may slip from the minds weak grasp unless fixed there by imagery and style.

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
Minds
Imagery
Weak
Slip
However
Arguments
Unless
Slips
Style
Grasp
May
Logical
Mind
Fixed
Like
Argument
Eels

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Must being in love always mean being in pain?
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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.
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When you look at the Moon, you think, ‘I’m really small. What are my problems?’ It sets things into perspective. We should all look at the Moon a bit more often.
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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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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 accept the need to train extensively to fly a plane but think instinct should be enough for marrying and raising kids.
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It should not be Illiers-Combray that we visit: a genuine homage to Proust would be to look at our world through his eyes, not look at his world through our eyes.
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Only by declaring a book completely finished can one start to see how much remains to be done on it.
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Literature deserves its prestige for one reason above all others - because it's a tool to help us live and die with a little bit more wisdom, goodness, and sanity.
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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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Rather than getting more spoilt with age, as difficulties pile up, epiphanies of gratitude abound.
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Despite its maddeningly vague, inarticulate form, anxiety is almost always trying to tell you something useful and apposite.
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Rather than employing it as a supplement to active, conscious seeing, they used the medium as a substitute, paying less attention to the world than they had done previously, taking it on faith that photography automatically assured them possession of it.
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Maturity: the confidence to have no opinions on many things.
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The only possible way to begin a book is to tell oneself that its eventual failure is guaranteed — but survivable.
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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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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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Kant and Hegel are interesting thinkers. But I am happy to insist that they are also terrible writers.
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Out of the millions of people we live among, most of whom we habitually ignore and are ignored by in turn, there are always a few that hold hostage our capacity for happiness, whom we could recognize by their smell alone and whom we would rather die than be without.
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Being content is perhaps no less easy than playing the violin well: and requires no less practice.
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