Quote

Choosing a spouse and a choosing career: the two great decisions for which society refuses to set up institutional guidance.

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
Two
Choosing
Great
Guidance
Decisions
Refuse
Career
Careers
Institutional
Decision
Refuses
Society
Spouse

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Insomnia is a glamorous term for thoughts you forgot to have in the day.
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Curiosity takes ignorance seriously - and is confident enough to admit when it's in the dark. It is aware of not knowing. And then it sets out to do something about it.
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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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In their different ways, art and philosophy help us, in Schopenhauer's words, to turn pain into knowledge.
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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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What kills us isn't one big thing, but thousands of tiny obligations we can't turn down for fear of disappointing others.
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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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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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Man seems merely dust postponed: the sublime as an encounter - pleasurable, intoxicating, even - with human weakness in the face of strength, age and size of the universe.
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We may seek a fortune for no greater reason than to secure the respect and attention of people who would otherwise look straight through us.
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The architects who benefit us most maybe those generous enough to lay aside their claims to genius in order to devote themselves to assembling graceful but predominantly unoriginal boxes. Architecture should have the confidence and the kindness to be a little boring.
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True respectability stems not from the will of the majority but from proper reasoning.
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In the works of Lucretius, we find two reasons why we shouldn't worry about death. If you have had a successful life, Lucretius tell us, there's no reason to mind its end. And, if you haven't had a good time, Why do you seek to add more years, which would also pass but ill?
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We are certainly influenced by role models, and if we are surrounded by images of beautiful rich people, we will start to think that to be beautiful and rich is very important - just as in the Middle Ages, people were surrounded by images of religious piety.
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We don't really learn anything properly until there is a problem, until we are in pain, until something fails to go as we had hoped ... We suffer, therefore we think.
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How do the stems connect to the roots?' 'Where is the mist coming from?' 'Why does one tree seem darker than another?' These questions are implicitly asked and answered in the process of sketching.
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A great writer picks up on those things that matter. It’s almost like their radar is attuned to the most significant moments.
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My writing always came out of a very personal place, out of an attempt to stay sane.
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A 'good job' can be both practically attractive while still not good enough to devote your entire life to.
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Artistic accounts involve severe abbreviations of what reality will force upon us.
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