Quote

Most anger stems from feelings of weakness, sadness and fear: hard to remember when one is at the receiving end of its defiant roar.

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
Fear
Defiant
Feelings
Stems
Roar
Ends
Stem
Remember
Receiving
Hard
Sadness
Anger
Weakness

More quotes by Alain de Botton

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It is not just nature that defies us. Human life is as overwhelming... If we spend time in it [the vast spaces of nature], they may help us to accept more graciously the great, unfathomable events that molest our lives and will inevitably return us to dust.
Alain de Botton
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Maturity: the confidence to have no opinions on many things.
Alain de Botton
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We need objects to remind us of the commitments we've made. That carpet from Morocco reminds us of the impulsive, freedom-loving side of ourselves we're in danger of losing touch with. Beautiful furniture gives us something to live up to. All designed objects are propaganda for a way of life.
Alain de Botton
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A good half of the art of living is resilience.
Alain de Botton
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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.
Alain de Botton
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A lump rises in our throat at the sight of beauty from an implicit knowledge that the happiness it hints at is the exception.
Alain de Botton
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Art cannot single-handedly create enthusiasm... it merely contributes to enthusiasm and guides us to be more conscious of feelings that we might previously have experienced only tentatively or hurriedly.
Alain de Botton
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One of our major flaws, and causes of unhappiness, is that we find it hard to take note of appreciate and be grateful for what is always around us. We suffer because we lose sight of the value of what is before us and yearn, often unfairly, for the imagined attraction elsewhere.
Alain de Botton
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Happiness may be difficult to obtain. The obstacles are not primarily financial.
Alain de Botton
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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
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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.
Alain de Botton
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Bad architecture is in the end as much a failure of psychology as of design. It is an example expressed through materials of the same tendencies which in other domains will lead us to marry the wrong people, choose inappropriate jobs and book unsuccessful holidays: the tendency not to understand who we are and what will satisfy us.
Alain de Botton
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Everyone wants a better life: very few of us want to be better people.
Alain de Botton
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The mind does most of its best thinking when we aren't there. The answers are there in the morning.
Alain de Botton
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The Arab-Israeli conflict is also in many ways a conflict about status: it's a war between two peoples who feel deeply humiliated by the other, who want the other to respect them. Battles over status can be even more intractable than those over land or water or oil.
Alain de Botton
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Artistic accounts involve severe abbreviations of what reality will force upon us.
Alain de Botton
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The challenge of modern relationships: how to prove more interesting than the other's smartphone.
Alain de Botton
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Forcing people to eat together is an effective way to promote tolerance.
Alain de Botton
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Never too late to learn some embarrassingly basic, stupidly obvious things about oneself.
Alain de Botton
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To look at the paper is to raise a seashell to one's ear and to be overwhelmed by the roar of humanity.
Alain de Botton