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After 40 (old age for most of man's history), one should strive to be more or less packed and ready to go were the end call to come.
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
Come
Packed
Men
Strive
Ready
Call
Age
Less
History
Ends
More quotes by Alain de Botton
Only as we mature does affection begin to depend on achievement.
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
Most of us still caged within careers chosen for us by our not entirely worldly 18-22 year old selves.
Alain de Botton
Travel agents would be wiser to ask us what we hope to change about our lives rather than simply where we wish to go.
Alain de Botton
The secular world is full of holes. We have secularized badly.
Alain de Botton
There is no such thing as work-life balance. Everything worth fighting for unbalances your life.
Alain de Botton
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
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?
Alain de Botton
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
Getting to the top has an unfortunate tendency to persuade people that the system is OK after all.
Alain de Botton
It is in dialogue with pain that many beautiful things acquire their value. Acquaintance with grief turns out to be one of the more unusual prerequisites of architectural appreciation. We might, quite aside from all other requirements, need to be a little sad before buildings can properly touch us.
Alain de Botton
Our greatest furies spring from events which violate our sense of the ground of our existence.
Alain de Botton
Literature deeply stands opposed to the dominant value system-the one that rewards money and power. Writers are on the other side-they make us sympathetic to ideas and feelings that are of deep importance but can’t afford airtime in a commercialized, status-consciou s, and cynical world.
Alain de Botton
People who go on to be writers are those who can forgive themselves the horror of the first draft.
Alain de Botton
What we find exotic abroad may be what we hunger for in vain at home.
Alain de Botton
We should keep a careful diary of our moments of envy: they are our covert guides to what we should try to do next.
Alain de Botton
Reputation matters so much only because people so seldom think for themselves.
Alain de Botton
Intimacy is the capacity to be rather weird with someone - and finding that that's ok with them.
Alain de Botton
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.
Alain de Botton
When I see someone like Richard Dawkins, I see my father. I grew up with that. I'm basically the child of Richard Dawkins.
Alain de Botton
