Quote

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?

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
Asked
Passerby
Worry
Retorted
Called
Socrates
Names
Insulted
Think
Kicked
Thinking
Resent
Marketplace
Ass

More quotes by Alain de Botton

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A danger of travel is that we see things at the wrong time, before we have had a chance to build up the necessary receptivity and when new information is therefore as useless and fugitive as necklace beads without a connecting chain.
Alain de Botton
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It would scarcely be acceptable, for example, to ask in the course of an ordinary conversation what our society holds to be the purpose of work.
Alain de Botton
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Intimacy is the capacity to be rather weird with someone - and finding that that's ok with them.
Alain de Botton
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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.
Alain de Botton
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The dream of the news is that it makes us care about other people and situations. But we cannot identify with people to whom we haven't been introduced. Humans will only respond to art, to people who are skilled in making you care.
Alain de Botton
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The mind may be reluctant to think properly when thinking is all it is supposed to do the task can be as paralysing as having to tell a joke or mimic an accent on demand.
Alain de Botton
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In Britain, because I live here, I can also run into problems of envy and competition. But all this is just in a day's work for a writer. You can't put stuff out there without someone calling you a complete fool. Oh, well.
Alain de Botton
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Good sex isn't just fun, it keeps us sane and happy. Having sex with someone makes us feel wanted, alive and potent.
Alain de Botton
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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.
Alain de Botton
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Writing a book has about it some of the anxiety of telling a joke and having to wait several years to know whether or not it was funny.
Alain de Botton
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How generous was it to offer gifts to people one knew would never accept them?
Alain de Botton
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It is in books, poems, paintings which often give us the confidence to take seriously feelings in ourselves that we might otherwise never have thought to acknowledge.
Alain de Botton
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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.
Alain de Botton
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We will cease to be angry once we cease to be so hopeful.
Alain de Botton
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Reputation matters so much only because people so seldom think for themselves.
Alain de Botton
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The challenge for a human now is to be more interesting to another than his or her smartphone.
Alain de Botton
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The degree of sympathy we feel regarding another's fiasco is directly proportional to how easy or difficult it is for us to imagine ourselves, under like circumstances, making a similar mistake.
Alain de Botton
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Most good thinking has its origin in fear.
Alain de Botton
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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.
Alain de Botton
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Let death find us as we are building up our matchstick protests against its waves.
Alain de Botton