Quote

It seems the only way to write a half decent book is to worry oneself sick on an hourly basis that one is producing a complete disaster.

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
Sick
Hourly
Worry
Producing
Half
Decent
Write
Basis
Seems
Disaster
Book
Bases
Writing
Complete
Way
Oneself

More quotes by Alain de Botton

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Arguments are like eels: however logical, they may slip from the minds weak grasp unless fixed there by imagery and style.
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He did not mean to depress us, rather to free us from expectations which inspire bitterness. It is consoling, when love has let us down, to hear that happiness was never part of the plan.
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We are continuously challenged to discover new works of culture—and, in the process, we don’t allow any one of them to assume a weight in our minds.
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These inventors were elevating the formulation of entrepreneurial ideas to the status of a visionary activity. Though forced to justify their efforts in the pragmatic language of venture capital, they were at heart utopian thinkers intent on transforming the world.
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Most good thinking has its origin in fear.
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Being content is perhaps no less easy than playing the violin well: and requires no less practice.
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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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what we call a home is merely any place that succeeds in making more consistenly available to us the important truths which the wider world ignores, or which our distracted and irresolute selves have trouble holding onto. (p123) Architecture of Happiness
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Year-end financial statements express a truth about office life which is no less irrefutable yet also, in the end, no less irrelevant or irritating than an evolutionary biologist's proud reminder that the purpose of existence lies in the propagation of our genes.
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In Britain, because I live here, I can also run into problems of envy and competition. But all this is just in a day's work for a writer. You can't put stuff out there without someone calling you a complete fool. Oh, well.
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By travelling across frontiers, on horseback and in the imagination, Montaigne invited us to to exchange local prejudices and the self division they induced for less constraining identities as citizens of the world.
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Don't despair: despair suggests you are in total control and know what is coming. You don't - surrender to events with hope.
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I feel that the great challenge of our time is the communication of ideas.
Alain de Botton
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I was foreign and Jewish, with a funny name, and was very small and hated sport, a real problem at an English prep school. So the way to get round it was to become the school joker, which I did quite effectively - I was always fooling around to make the people who would otherwise dump me in the loo laugh.
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The attentions of others matter to us because we are afflicted by a congenital uncertainty as to our own value, as a result of which affliction we tend to allow others' appraisals to play a determining role in how we see ourselves. Our sense of identity is held captive by the judgements of those we live among.
Alain de Botton
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He was marked out by his relentless ability to find fault with others' mediocrity - suggesting that a certain type of intelligence may be at heart nothing more or less than a superior capacity for dissatisfaction.
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Responsible for wrapping the iron fist of authority in its velvet glove is Jane Axtell, head of the accountancy firm's Human Resources department.
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We read the weird tales in newspapers to crowd out the even weirder stuff inside us.
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You have to be quite heavily invested in someone to do them the honour of telling them you're annoyed with them.
Alain de Botton
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Art holds out the promise of inner wholeness.
Alain de Botton