When I see someone like Richard Dawkins, I see my father. I grew up with that. I’m basically the child of Richard Dawkins.
ALAIN DE BOTTONWriting isn’t a career choice. It’s self-medication that over time precipitates the madness it was meant to ward off.
More Alain de Botton Quotes
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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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A successful work will draw out the features capable of exciting a sense of beauty and interest in the spectator.
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Journeys are the midwives of thought. Few places are more conducive to internal conversations than moving planes, ships or trains.
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If one felt successful, there’d be so little incentive to be successful.
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People who readily accept the need for a gym will resist that their personalities might need some work too.
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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.
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The problem is if you really believe in a society where those who merit to get to the top, get to the top, you’ll also, by implication … believe in a society where those who deserve to get to the bottom also get to the bottom and stay there.
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Once I began to consider everything as being of potential interest, objects released latent layers of value.
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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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Most good thinking has its origin in fear.
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Only by declaring a book completely finished can one start to see how much remains to be done on it.
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When you look at the Moon, you think, ‘I’m really small. What are my problems?’ It sets things into perspective. We should all look at the Moon a bit more often.
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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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Intimacy is the capacity to be rather weird with someone – and finding that that’s ok with them.
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In a secularising world, art has replaced religion as a touchstone of our reverence and devotion.
ALAIN DE BOTTON