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The most unbearable thing about many successful people is not - as we flatteringly think - how lazy they are, but how hard they work.

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
People
Lazy
Successful
Many
Hard
Thing
Work
Think
Thinking
Unbearable

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Art holds out the promise of inner wholeness.
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I assemble my ideas in pieces on a computer file, then gradually find a place for them on a piece of scaffolding I erect.
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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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It is striking how much more seriously we are likely to be taken after we have been dead a few centuries.
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Booksellers are the most valuable destination for the lonely, given the numbers of books that were written because authors couldn't find anyone to talk to.
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The telephone becomes an instrument of torture in the demonic hands of a beloved who doesn't call.
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True love is a lack of desire to check one's smartphone in another's presence.
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Forcing people to eat together is an effective way to promote tolerance.
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We are sensitized by the books we read. And the more books we read, and the deeper their lessons sink into us, the more pairs of glasses we have. And those glasses enable us to see things we would have otherwise missed.
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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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Mental health: having enough safe places in your mind for your thoughts to settle.
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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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We should not be frightened by appearances.
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I'm also interested in the modern suggestion that you can have a combination of love and sex in a marriage - which no previous society has ever believed.
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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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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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Reputation matters so much only because people so seldom think for themselves.
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Forgiveness requires a sense that bad behaviour is a sign of suffering rather than malice.
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We keep a special place in our hearts for people who refuse to be impressed by us.
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Because the rhythm of conversation makes no allowance for dead periods, because the presence of others calls for continuous responses, we are left to regret the inanity of what we say, and the missed opportunity of what we do not.
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