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

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The longing for destiny is nowhere stronger than in our romantic life.
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Everyone returns us to a different sense of ourselves, for we become a little of who they think we are.
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I passionately believe that's it's not just what you say that counts, it's also how you say it - that the success of your argument critically depends on your manner of presenting it.
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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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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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Every adult life could be said to be defined by two great love stories: the story of our quest for sexual love and the story of our quest for love from the world.
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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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Envy: a confused, tangled guide to one's own ambitions.
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We often lose our tempers not with those who are actually to blame just with those who love us enough to forgive us our foul moods.
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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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If our lives are dominated by a search for happiness, then perhaps few activities reveal as much about the dynamics of this quest - in all its ardour and paradoxes - than our travels.
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We should not feel embarrassed by our difficulties, only by our failure to grow anything beautiful from them.
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The happiness that may emerge from taking a second look is central to Proust's therapeutic conception. It reveals the extent to which our dissatisfactions may be the result of failing to look properly at our lives rather than the result of anything inherently deficient about them.
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One's doing well if age improves even slightly one's capacity to hold on to that vital truism: This too shall pass.
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Our homes do not have to offer us permanent occupancy or store our clothes to merit the name. To speak of home in relation to a building is simply to recognise its harmony with our own prized internal song. Home can be an airport or a library, a garden or a motorway diner.
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What is a snob? A snob is anybody who takes a small part of you and uses that to come to a complete vision of who you are. That is snobbery.
Alain de Botton
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We envy only those whom we feel ourselves to be like we envy only members of our reference group. There are few successes more unendurable than those of our close friends.
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Despite its maddeningly vague, inarticulate form, anxiety is almost always trying to tell you something useful and apposite.
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The desire for high status is never stronger than in situations where ordinary life fails to answer a median need for dignity and comfort.
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to design means forcing ourselves to unlearn what we believe we already know, patiently to take apart the mechanisms behind our reflexes and to acknowledge the mystery and stupefying complexity of everyday gestures like switching off a light of turning on a tap
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