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Although I don't believe in God, Bach's music shows me what a love of God must feel like.

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
Feel
Must
Feels
Believe
Love
Bach
Like
Although
Shows
Music

More quotes by Alain de Botton

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There is real danger of a disconnect between what's on your business card and who you are deep inside, and it's not a disconnect that the world is ready to be patient with.
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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.
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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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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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When I see someone like Richard Dawkins, I see my father. I grew up with that. I'm basically the child of Richard Dawkins.
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We wanted to test each other's capacity for survival: only if we had tried in vain to destroy one another would we know we were safe.
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We should not be frightened by appearances.
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The longing for a destiny is no nowhere stronger than in our romantic life. All too often forced to share our bed with those who cannot fathom our soul, can we not be forgiven if we believe ourselves fated to stumble one day upon the man or woman of our dreams.
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Not being understood may be taken as a sign that there is much in one to understand.
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The difference between hope and despair is a different way of telling stories from the same facts.
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It's as though either you accept [religious] doctrine and then you can have all the nice stuff, or you reject the doctrine and you're living in some kind of spiritual wasteland under the guidance of CNN and Walmart.
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The blunt large questions become connected to smaller, apparently esoteric ones.
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Status anxiety definitely exists at a political level. Many Iraqis were annoyed with the US essentially for reasons of status: for not showing them respect, for humiliating them.
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Objectively good spaces to work rarely end up being so in their faultlessness, quiet and well-equipped studios have a habit of rendering the fear of failure overwhelming. Original thoughts are like shy animals. We sometimes have to look the other way - towards a busy street or terminal - before they run out of their burrows.
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Why, then, if expensive things cannot bring us remarkable joy, are we so powerfully drawn to them?
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I feel that the great challenge of our time is the communication of ideas.
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It is perhaps when our lives are at their most problematic that we are likely to be most receptive to beautiful things.
Alain de Botton
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Most of what makes a book 'good' is that we are reading it at the right moment for us.
Alain de Botton
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The longing for destiny is nowhere stronger than in our romantic life.
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Perhaps it is true that we do not really exist until there is someone there to see us existing, we cannot properly speak until there is someone who can understand what we are saying in essence, we are not wholly alive until we are loved.
Alain de Botton