Paying tax should be framed as a glorious civic duty worthy of gratitude – not a punishment for making money.
ALAIN DE BOTTONThere may be significant things to learn about people by looking at what annoys them most.
More Alain de Botton Quotes
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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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It is perhaps when our lives are at their most problematic that we are likely to be most receptive to beautiful things.
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One of the unexpectedly important things that art can do for us is to teach us how to suffer more successfully.
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Out of the millions of people we live among, most of whom we habitually ignore and are ignored by in turn, there are always a few that hold hostage our capacity for happiness, whom we could recognize by their smell alone and whom we would rather die than be without.
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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.
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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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William James once made an acute point about the relationship between happiness and expectation. He argued that satisfaction with ourselves does not require us to succeed in every endeavour.
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All tours are filled with humiliation. My publisher once hired a private jet to fly me to a venue where 1,000 people were waiting. It almost bankrupted him.
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I went to church and couldn’t swallow it. The music was nice but I don’t belong there.
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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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Maturity: the confidence to have no opinions on many things.
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A ‘good job’ can be both practically attractive while still not good enough to devote your entire life to.
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The longing for destiny is nowhere stronger than in our romantic life.
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The good parent: someone who doesn’t mind, for a time, being hated by their children.
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As adults, we try to develop the character traits that would have rescued our parents.
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