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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
Frightened
Appearance
Appearances

More quotes by Alain de Botton

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Our minds are susceptible to the influence of external voices telling us what we require to be satisfied, voices that may drown out the faint sounds emitted by our souls and distract us from the careful, arduous task of accurately naming our priorities.
Alain de Botton
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The good parent: someone who doesn't mind, for a time, being hated by their children.
Alain de Botton
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Pegging your contentment to the overall state of the world rather than of your own life: the basis of morality, or a sort of madness?
Alain de Botton
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Forgiveness requires a sense that bad behaviour is a sign of suffering rather than malice.
Alain de Botton
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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.
Alain de Botton
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Our jobs make relentless calls on a narrow band of our faculties, reducing our chances of achieving rounded personalities and leaving us to suspect (often in the gathering darkness of a Sunday evening) that much of who we are, or could be, has gone unexplored.
Alain de Botton
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When Proust urges us to evaluate the world properly, he repeatedly reminds us of the value of modest scenes.
Alain de Botton
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The most attractive are not those who allow us to kiss them at once [we soon feel ungrateful] or those who never allow us to kiss them [we soon forget them], but those who coyly lead us between the two extremes.
Alain de Botton
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The mind does most of its best thinking when we aren't there. The answers are there in the morning.
Alain de Botton
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Good books put a finger on emotions that are deeply our own - but that we could never have described on our own.
Alain de Botton
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Despite the best efforts of critics and the hopes of authors, our tastes in books are probably as inherent & unbudgeable as those in food.
Alain de Botton
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What is a snob? A snob is anybody who takes a small part of you and uses that to come to a complete vision of who you are. That is snobbery.
Alain de Botton
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Every realistic picture represents a choice as to which features of reality should be given prominence no painting ever captures the whole.
Alain de Botton
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The blunt large questions become connected to smaller, apparently esoteric ones.
Alain de Botton
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Sublime places repeat in grand terms a lesson that ordinary life typically teaches viciously: that the universe is mightier than we are, that we are frail and temporary and have no alternative but to accept limitations on our will that we must bow to necessities greater than ourselves.
Alain de Botton
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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
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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.
Alain de Botton
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The desire for high status is never stronger than in situations where ordinary life fails to answer a median need for dignity and comfort.
Alain de Botton
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We read the weird tales in newspapers to crowd out the even weirder stuff inside us.
Alain de Botton
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The materialistic view of happiness of our age starkly revealed in our understanding of the word luxury.
Alain de Botton