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We should not be frightened by appearances.
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
Appearances
Frightened
Appearance
More quotes by Alain de Botton
Unnatural to expect that learning to be happy should be any easier than, say, learning to play the violin or require any less practice.
Alain de Botton
The universe is large and we are tiny, without the need for further religious superstructure. One can have so-called spiritual moments without belief in the spirit.
Alain de Botton
In their different ways, art and philosophy help us, in Schopenhauer's words, to turn pain into knowledge.
Alain de Botton
Journeys are the midwives of thought. Few places are more conducive to internal conversations than moving planes, ships or trains.
Alain de Botton
The longing for a destiny is no nowhere stronger than in our romantic life. All too often forced to share our bed with those who cannot fathom our soul, can we not be forgiven if we believe ourselves fated to stumble one day upon the man or woman of our dreams.
Alain de Botton
Our disrespect for thinking: someone sitting in a chair, gazing out of a window blankly, always described as 'doing nothing'.
Alain de Botton
It wasn't only fanatics and drunkards who began conversations with strangers in public.
Alain de Botton
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
It's clear to me that there is no good reason for many philosophy books to sound as complicated as they do.
Alain de Botton
The problem isn't so much finding good ideas (there is no shortage) as embedding the ones we have into everyday practice.
Alain de Botton
A successful work will draw out the features capable of exciting a sense of beauty and interest in the spectator.
Alain de Botton
We are sensitized by the books we read. And the more books we read, and the deeper their lessons sink into us, the more pairs of glasses we have. And those glasses enable us to see things we would have otherwise missed.
Alain de Botton
as the determinants of high status keep shifting, so, too, naturally, will the triggers of status anxiety be altered.
Alain de Botton
By travelling across frontiers, on horseback and in the imagination, Montaigne invited us to to exchange local prejudices and the self division they induced for less constraining identities as citizens of the world.
Alain de Botton
The problem is if you really believe in a society where those who merit to get to the top, get to the top, you’ll also, by implication … believe in a society where those who deserve to get to the bottom also get to the bottom and stay there.
Alain de Botton
I am conscious of trying to stretch the boundaries of non-fiction writing. It's always surprised me how little attention many non-fiction writers pay to the formal aspects of their work.
Alain de Botton
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.
Alain de Botton
What we seek, at the deepest level, is inwardly to resemble, rather than physically to possess, the objects and places that touch us through their beauty.
Alain de Botton
On paper, being good sounds great but a lot depends on the atmosphere of the workplace or community we live in. We tend to become good or bad depending on the cues sent out within a particular space.
Alain de Botton
Curiosity might be pictured as being made up of chains of small questions extending outwards, sometimes over huge distances, from a central hub composed of a few blunt, large questions.
Alain de Botton
