Alain de Botton Quotes

Never, ever become a writer. It's a nightmare.

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Literature deserves its prestige for one reason above all others - because it's a tool to help us live and die with a little bit more wisdom, goodness, and sanity.

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The challenge for a human now is to be more interesting to another than his or her smartphone.

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Social media has lots of benefits, but compared to Christianity, it tends to group people by interests. Religion puts you with people who have nothing in common except that you're human.

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One wants never to give up this crystalline perspective. One wants to keep counterpositioning home with what one knows of alternative realities, as they exist in Tunis or Hyderabad. One wants never to forget that nothing here is normal, that the streets are different in Wisebaden, and Louyang, that this is just one of many possible worlds.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Giving Up Quotes , Home Quotes

Her lie was symptomatic of a certain pride she took in mocking the romantic, in being unsentimental, matter-of-fact, stoic; yet at heart she was the oppo site: idealistic, dreamy, giving, and deeply attached to everything she liked verbally to dismiss as "mushy.

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Anyone who isn't embarrassed of who they were last year probably isn't learning enough.

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

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We used to build temples, and museums are about as close as secular society dares to go in facing up to the idea that a good building can change your life (and a bad one ruin it).

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Our responses to the world are crucially moulded by the company we keep, for we temper our curiosity to fit in with the expectations of others.

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As victims of hurt, we frequently don't bring up what ails us, because so many wounds look absurd in the light of day.

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If one felt successful, there'd be so little incentive to be successful.

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.. if you asked most people whether they believed in love or not, they’d probably say they didn’t. Yet that’s not necessarily what they truly think. It’s just the way they defend themselves against what they want. They believe in it, but pretend they don’t until they’re allowed to. Most people would throw away all their cynicism if they could. The majority just never gets the chance.

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It is perhaps sad books that best console us when we are sad, and to lonely service stations that we should drive when there is no one for us to hold or love.

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The fear of saying something stupid (which stupid people never have) has censored far more good ideas than bad ones.

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Writing isn’t a career choice. It’s self-medication that over time precipitates the madness it was meant to ward off.

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What is fascinating about marriage is why anyone wants to get married.

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The only people we can think of as normal are those we don't yet know very well.

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It's perhaps easier now than ever before to make a good living; it's perhaps harder than ever before to stay calm, to be free of career anxiety.

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After 40 (old age for most of man's history), one should strive to be more or less packed and ready to go were the end call to come.

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