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For all his understanding of worldly concerns, when it came to fathoming the deeper meaning of his own furious activity, Sir Bob displayed the sort of laziness for which he himself had no patience in others. He appeared to have only a passing interest in the overall purpose of his financial accumulation.

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
Interest
Deeper
Bob
Purpose
Financial
Accumulation
Others
Concern
Laziness
Activity
Concerns
Meaning
Worldly
Displayed
Sort
Passings
Furious
Came
Patience
Overall
Understanding
Passing
Appeared

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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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The good parent: someone who doesn't mind, for a time, being hated by their children.
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It's hard loving those who don't much like themselves: If you're so great, why would you think I'm so great.
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There may be significant things to learn about people by looking at what annoys them most.
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Although I don't believe in God, Bach's music shows me what a love of God must feel like.
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as the determinants of high status keep shifting, so, too, naturally, will the triggers of status anxiety be altered.
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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?
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Much of the really serious trouble in the world gets going with a sense of humiliation.
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Newspapers are being read all around. The point is not, of course, to glean new information, but rather to coax the mind out of its sleep-induced introspective temper.
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The more closely we analyze what we consider 'sexy,' the more clearly we will understand that eroticism is the feeling of excitement we experience at finding another human being who shares our values and our sense of the meaning of existence.
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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.
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True respectability stems not from the will of the majority but from proper reasoning.
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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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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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There is a devilishly direct relationship between the significance of an idea and how nervous we become at the prospect of having to think about it.
Alain de Botton
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Politics is so difficult, it's generally only people who aren't quite up to the task who feel convinced they are.
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Work is most fulfilling when you're at the comfortable, exciting edge of not quite knowing what you are doing.
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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
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The lesson? To respond to the unexpected and hurtful behavior of others with something more than a wipe of the glasses, to see it as a chance to expand our understanding.
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Dreams reveal we never quite get 'over' anything: it's all still in there somewhere.
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