Alain de Botton quote: "Sometimes my biography is interpreted as the upbringing of a French aristocrat. It was very, very different. We were a family of mercantile, immigrant Jews."

Pick up any newspaper or magazine, open the TV, and you'll be bombarded with suggestions of how ...
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Atheism is having a heyday in the born-again United States.
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What bothers me is that there is so much emphasis on food, rather than gathering and meeting - so th...
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Though it may feel otherwise, enjoying life is no more dangerous than apprehending it with continuou...
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One rarely falls in love without being as much attracted to what is interestingly wrong with someone...
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We read the weird tales in newspapers to crowd out the even weirder stuff inside us.
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There's a whole category of people who miss out by not allowing themselves to be weird enough.
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Intimacy is the capacity to be rather weird with someone - and finding that that's ok with them.
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The more familiar two people become, the more the language they speak together departs from that of ...
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...if the beginnings of love and amorous politics are equally rosy, then the ends may be equally blo...
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In the works of Lucretius, we find two reasons why we shouldn
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The longing for a destiny is no nowhere stronger than in our romantic life. All too often forced to ...
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He did not mean to depress us, rather to free us from expectations which inspire bitterness. It is c...
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At the top of the slope on the perimeter of the site, overlooking six lanes of motorway, is a diner ...
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I was an incredibly lonely, very alienated teenager.
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I am not a foodie, thank goodness. I will eat pretty much anything. A lot of my friends are getting ...
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There is militaristic-hegemonic-plutocratic side of the U.S. which is getting out of hand and threat...
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It's almost a blessing when we meet people who naturally want to do the sort of things that are ...
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It's very hard to respect people on holiday - everybody looks so silly at the beach, it makes yo...
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Small issues are really just large ones that haven't been accorded the requisite attention.
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Fantasies can be great, but we shouldn't make the wedding a fantasy, because the wedding is the ...
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Most of the time, we make discoveries about how difficult people are at the moment when the difficul...
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The thing is that love gives us a ringside seat on somebody else's flaws, so of course you'r...
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I'm one of those introverted people who simply feels a lot better after spending time alone thin...
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My dad was a slightly stricter version of Richard Dawkins. The worldview was that there are idiots o...
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Laughter is an important part of a good relationship. It's an immense achievement when you can m...
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The materialistic view of happiness of our age starkly revealed in our understanding of the word "lu...
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We tend to think of philosophies as produced by professional philosophers. Traditionally, this has m...
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The romantic person instinctively sees marriage in terms of emotions, but what a couple actually get...
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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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What makes people good communicators is, in essence, an ability not to be fazed by the more problema...
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A world where a majority had imbibed the lessons implicit within tragic art would be one in which th...
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Parents don't reveal how often they have bitten their tongue, fought back the tears, or been too...
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We each appear to hold within ourselves a range of divergent views as to our native qualities.. And ...
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The humanities have been forced to disguise, both from themselves and their students, why their subj...
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I assemble my ideas in pieces on a computer file, then gradually find a place for them on a piece of...
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Cynics are - beneath it all - only idealists with awkwardly high standards.
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The more people you have to ask for permission, the more dangerous a project gets.
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What annoys me about most self-help books is that they have no tragic sense. They have no sense that...
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The arrogance that says analysing the relationship between reasons and causes is more important than...
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I passionately believe that's it's not just what you say that counts, it's also how you ...
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Forgiveness requires a sense that bad behaviour is a sign of suffering rather than malice.
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The start receives such disproportionate attention because it isn't deemed to be just one phase amon...
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Feeling lost, crazy and desperate belongs to a good life as much as optimism, certainty and reason.
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If you are pro love, you have to be a little bit disloyal to the romantic feelings that propel you i...
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The number one person who needs my books is me. I'm not some sort of disinterested guru who has ...
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Parents become very good at not hearing the explicit words and listening instead to what the child m...
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Secular thinkers have a separation between thinking and doing. They don't have a grasp of the ba...
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The pleasure we derive from journeys is perhaps dependent more on the mindset with which we travel t...
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I waste most of the day, then finally start to write around 3 P.M., totally disgusted with myself fo...
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We have to put aside the customary historical reading of works of art in order to invite art to resp...
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I remember going to university, and the people who'd left home for the first time looked at the ...
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The moment we cry in a film is not when things are sad but when they turn out to be more beautiful t...
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Everyone's more vulnerable than they seem, and I think men are more vulnerable. Once you get clo...
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At 'The School of Life', we take seriously anything that has to do with human fulfilment - a...
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A city like London is sociable in a sense that there are people gathering in bars and restaurants, c...
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I was foreign and Jewish, with a funny name, and was very small and hated sport, a real problem at a...
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As for despair, it comes about when I have been a fool and hate myself and despair of my personality...
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Therapy and counseling can do wonderful things for people. But they have emerged so far as what are ...
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The idea that one might use art for 'instrumental' reasons tends to set off alarm bells at t...
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We are never through with the requirement for acceptance. This isn't a curse limited to the inadequa...
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Status anxiety definitely exists at a political level. Many Iraqis were annoyed with the US essentia...
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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 - tha...
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I am in general a very pessimistic person with an optimistic, day-to-day take on things. The bare fa...
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We are certainly influenced by role models, and if we are surrounded by images of beautiful rich peo...
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The Arab-Israeli conflict is also in many ways a conflict about status: it's a war between two p...
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Getting to the top has an unfortunate tendency to persuade people that the system is OK after all.
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Katie Price is no exception. She, too, is - in a distinctive way - a philosopher. Partially, Katie P...
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Used to do a lot of falling in love with people, almost in the street, and imagining that there woul...
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Le Corbusier is an outstanding writer. His ideas achieved their impact in large measure because he c...
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Since the beginning of the 20th century, the public's relationship to art has been weakened by a...
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There's a certain kind of insular, old-fashioned, upper-class Britishness that gives me the spoo...
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After Carol had left, as Symons threw away a pile of used tissues and rearranged the cushions on the...
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I am conscious of trying to stretch the boundaries of non-fiction writing. It's always surprised...
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I've had my successes and failures. I know many academics in my field loathe me. I've come t...
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Sweetness is the opposite of machismo, which is everywhere - and I really don't get on with mach...
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For thousands of years, it had been nature--and its supposed creator--that had had a monopoly on awe...
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Everyone returns us to a different sense of ourselves, for we become a little of who they think we a...
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Perhaps the easiest people to fall in love with are those about whom
we know nothing. Romances...
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A person cannot be at once a libertine and a married Romantic, however compelling both paradigms mig...
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We owe it to the fields that our houses will not be the inferiors of the virgin land they have repla...
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What we typically call love is only the start of love. Our understanding of love has been hijacked a...
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On account of its scale and complexity, the world will always outstrip the capacity of any single bo...
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Kant and Hegel are interesting thinkers. But I am happy to insist that they are also terrible writer...
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Emotional life is - alongside work - one of the great challenges of existence and is a theme that I ...
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The most attractive are not those who allow us to kiss them at once (we soon feel ungrateful) or tho...
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Booksellers are the most valuable destination for the lonely, given the numbers of books that were w...
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There are few more effective ways to promote tolerance between suspicious neighbours than to force t...
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There's a constant tension between the excitement of new people and security with one person. If...
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We are all more intelligent than we are capable, and awareness of the insanity of love has never sav...
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There is no one more likely to destroy us than the person we marry.
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The challenge lies in knowing how to bring this sort of day to a close. His mind has been wound to a...
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Many people in the intellectual elite are very scared of shouting. They insist on very quiet murmurs...
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as the determinants of high status keep shifting, so, too, naturally, will the triggers of status an...
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Far from rejecting outright any hierarchy of success or failure, philosophy instead reconfigures the...
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It is according to how we are able to answer the question of what we do (normally the first enquiry ...
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Philosophy, art, politics, religion and bohemia have never sought to do away entirely with the statu...
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People who hold important positions in society are commonly labelled "somebodies," and their inverse...
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The desire for high status is never stronger than in situations where "ordinary" life fails to answe...
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There is a danger of developing a blanket distaste for modern life which could have its attractions ...
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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 of what makes a book 'good' is that we are reading it at the right moment for us.
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A 'good job' can be both practically attractive while still not good enough to devote your entire li...
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There is no such thing as work-life balance. Everything worth fighting for unbalances your life.
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When does a job feel meaningful? Whenever it allows us to generate delight or reduce suffering in ot...
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One's doing well if age improves even slightly one's capacity to hold on to that vital truism: "This...
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A good half of the art of living is resilience.
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...workplace dynamics are no less complicated or unexpectedly intense than family relations, with on...
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We are humiliated by what is powerful and mean, but awed by what is powerful and noble.
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Literature has always had its circus side, its freaks and its frivolities - and maybe that's all par...
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I love the idea of a university as away from capitalist values, where people can do things that don&...
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What makes the prospect of death distinctive in the modern age is the background of permanent techno...
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It seems, in fact, that the more advanced a society is, the greater will be its interest in ruined t...
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It is one of the unexpected disasters of the modern age that our new unparalleled access to informat...
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In a secularising world, art has replaced religion as a touchstone of our reverence and devotion.
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Blind impatience is equally evident in the fruit section. Our ancestors might have delighted in the ...
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Bitterness: anger that forgot where it came from.
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Only as we mature does affection begin to depend on achievement.
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Don't despair: despair suggests you are in total control and know what is coming. You don't - surren...
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We are continuously challenged to discover new works of culture—and, in the process, we don’t al...
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We may seek a fortune for no greater reason than to secure the respect and attention of people who w...
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In Britain, because I live here, I can also run into problems of envy and competition. But all this ...
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Snobbery exists in all areas of life, not least literary criticism. By snobbery I mean, any method o...
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Pick up any newspaper or magazine, open the TV, and you'll be bombarded with suggestions of how to h...
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It is the most ambitious and driven among us who are the most sorely in need of having our reckless ...
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I've tried to write about Heathrow before and been escorted off the premises.
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Because I have this thing about birthdays--they always remind me of death and forced jollity.
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He was a volatile mixture of confidence and vulnerability. He could deliver extended monologues on p...
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The feeling one has no time to get anything done provides the pressure that guarantees one does get ...
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I'm fascinated by Comte's clear-eyed analysis of what was wrong with modern society, which i...
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The largest part of what we call 'personality' is determined by how we've opted to defend ourselves ...
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It is in dialogue with pain that many beautiful things acquire their value. Acquaintance with grief ...
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The most courageous act in politics is to try to understand your opponent.
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The idea of a book that can make a change to your life, that can affect your perspective, is a beaut...
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The philosophy I love is very selective. It is really just the bit that is involved in a search for ...
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It is hope--with regard to our careers, our love lives, our children, our politicians, and our plane...
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I learnt to stop fantasising about the perfect job or the perfect relationship because that can actu...
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He was marked out by his relentless ability to find fault with others' mediocrity--suggesting that a...
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There are books that speak to us of our own lives with a clarity we cannot match. They prevent the m...
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On paper, being good sounds great but a lot depends on the atmosphere of the workplace or community ...
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Travel is a lot like love.
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What is fascinating about marriage is why anyone wants to get married.
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I feel that the great challenge of our time is the communication of ideas.
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Learning to give up on perfection may be just about the most romantic move any of us could make.
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Work is a way of bringing order to chaos, and there's a basic satisfaction in seeing that we are...
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I like working with people. I believe change can only come through collaboration.
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I see religion as a storehouse of lots of really good ideas that a secular world should look at, rai...
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Rather than getting more spoilt with age, as difficulties pile up, epiphanies of gratitude abound.
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For the rest of history, for most of us, our bright promise will always fall short of being actualis...
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In 'Art as Therapy', we argue that art is a tool that can variously help to inspire, console...
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I was a very un-literary child, which might reassure parents with kids who don't read.
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In our more arrogant moments, the sin of pride—or superbia, in Augustine's Latin formulation—tak...
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Partially undermining the manufacturer's ability to assert that its work constituted a meaningful co...
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Pegging your contentment to the overall state of the world rather than of your own life: the basis o...
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The solution as consumers is - perhaps surprisingly - to take adverts very, very seriously. We shoul...
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We don't need to be constantly reasonable in order to have good relationships; all we need to have m...
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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 humani...
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I think of myself as quite a shy person. But when I'm curious about something, I'll go quite...
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Artworks are especially good at helping our psyches in a variety of ways: they rebalance our moods, ...
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[T]he unsympathetic assessments we make of others are usually the result of nothing more sinister th...
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It is not only the hostility of others that may prevent us from questioning the status quo. Our will...
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The most boring and unproductive question one can ask of any religion is whether or not it is true.
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Whatever modern democracies may tell themselves about their commitment to free speech and to diversi...
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The true nature of bureaucracy may be nowhere more obvious to the observer than in a developing coun...
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To be loved by someone is to realize how much they share the same needs that lie at the heart of our...
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We fall in love because we long to escape from ourselves with someone as beautiful, intelligent, and...
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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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A storyteller who provided us with such a profusion of details would rapidly grow maddening. Unfortu...
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We used to build temples, and museums are about as close as secular society dares to go in facing up...
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The Anxiety of Sunday afternoon: your unlived lives and infinite possibility pressing upon the const...
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Blessed with riches and possibilities far beyond anything imagined by ancestors who tilled the unpre...
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We need a home in the psychological sense as much as we need one in the physical: to compensate for ...
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Even if our loved ones have assured us that they will be busy at work, even if they told us they hat...
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You normally have to be bashed about a bit by life to see the point of daffodils, sunsets and uneven...
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What a peculiar civilisation this was: inordinately rich, yet inclined to accrue its wealth through ...
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Despite the best efforts of critics and the hopes of authors, our tastes in books are probably as in...
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We would like to go and see the field that Millet…shows us in his Springtime, we would like Claude...
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Our feelings of anxiety are genuine but confused signals that something is amiss, and so need to be ...
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Paying tax should be framed as a glorious civic duty worthy of gratitude - not a punishment for maki...
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It was no longer her absence that wounded me, but my growing indifference to it. Forgetting, however...
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Perhaps it is true that we do not really exist until there is someone there to see us existing, we c...
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Every fall into love involves the triumph of hope over self-knowledge. We fall in love hoping we won...
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Nature puts us all in our places. Being made to feel small isn't something we welcome when it's done...
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in Flaubert’s eyes, that only entirely illiterate and uneducated Frenchmen now stood a chance of b...
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A clean conscience is the preserve of those without sufficient imagination.
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In the past, Flaubert implied, idiots had had no clue as to what the carbon structure of diamonds wa...
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Never too late to learn some embarrassingly basic, stupidly obvious things about oneself.
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But we would do well to meditate daily, rather as the religious do on their God, on the 9.5 trillion...
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To a shameful extent, the charm of marriage boils down to how unpleasant it is to be alone. This isn...
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One of the best protections against disappointment is to have a lot going on.
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What kills us isn't one big thing, but thousands of tiny obligations we can't turn down for fear of ...
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Booksellers are the most valuable destination for the lonely, given the numbers of books written bec...
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It is precisely when we hear little from our partner which frightens, shocks, or sickens us that we ...
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Unrequited love may be painful, but it is safely painful, because it does not involve inflicting dam...
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It's clear to me that there is no good reason for many philosophy books to sound as complicated as t...
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Jarenlang kwam ik bij het boodschappen doen langs een huis dat weliswaar een van de lelijkste gebouw...
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Snobbery exists in all areas of life, not least literary criticism. By snobbery I mean, any method o...
ALAIN BOTTON

Kant and Hegel are interesting thinkers. But I am happy to insist that they are also terrible writer...
ALAIN BOTTON

I passionately believe that's it's not just what you say that counts, it's also how you say it - tha...
ALAIN BOTTON

I am in general a very pessimistic person with an optimistic, day-to-day take on things. The bare fa...
ALAIN BOTTON

Sometimes my biography is interpreted as the upbringing of a French aristocrat. It was very, very different. We were a family of mercantile, immigrant Jews.

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Alain de Botton

Sometimes my biography is interpreted as the upbringing of a French aristocrat. It was very, very different. We were a family of mercantile, immigrant Jews.

Alain de Botton

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