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As an atheist, I think there are lots of things religions get up to which are of value to non-believers – and one of those things is trying to be a bit better than we normally manage to be.

Alain de Botton

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.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Benefit Community Compare Interest Media Religious Social
Maturity: knowing where you’re crazy, trying to warn others of the fact and striving to keep yourself under control.
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Control Crazy Know Maturity Try Under
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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Close Envy Feel Friend Group Member Ourselves Reference
Bitterness: anger that forgot where it came from.
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Anger Bitterness Came Forget
We should not feel embarrassed by our difficulties, only by our failure to grow anything beautiful from them.
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Anything Beautiful Difficulty Embarrassed Failure Feel
Yet often, they know but just don’t care. So the task of serious journalism isn’t just to lay out truths. It is to make vital truths compelling to a big audience.
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Audience Big Compell Truth Vital
We read the weird tales in newspapers to crowd out the even weirder stuff inside us.
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Crowd Inside Newspaper Raed Stuff Tale Weird
In a secularising world, art has replaced religion as a touchstone of our reverence and devotion.
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Devotion Religion replace Reverence Secular Touchstone World
I went to church and couldn’t swallow it. The music was nice but I don’t belong there.
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Belong Church Music Nice Swallow
Forgiveness requires a sense that bad behaviour is a sign of suffering rather than malice.
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Behaviour Forgive Malice Require Sense Sign Suffer
Not being understood may be taken as a sign that there is much in one to understand.
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Mauch Sign Taken Understand Understood
It looks like it’s wasting time, but literature is actually the ultimate time-saver – because it gives us access to a range of emotions and events that it would take you years, decades, millennia to try to experience directly.
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Access Emotion Like Literature Look Range Saver Time Ultimate Waste
Though it may feel otherwise, enjoying life is no more dangerous than apprehending it with continuous anxiety and gloom.
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Apprehend Continous Dangerous Enjoy Feel More Otherwise
It is not just nature that defies us. Human life is as overwhelming… If we spend time in it [the vast spaces of nature], they may help us to accept more graciously the great, unfathomable events that molest our lives and will inevitably return us to dust.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Defies Human Life Nature Overwhelms Space Spend Time
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.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Fill Hire Humiliation People Private Publisher Tour Venue Wait
The more closely we analyze what we consider ‘sexy,’ the more clearly we will understand that eroticism is the feeling of excitement we experience at finding another human being who shares our values and our sense of the meaning of existence.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Analyze Clearly Closely Consider Eroticism Excitement Feel More Understand

As an atheist, I think there are lots of things religions get up to which are of value to non-believers – and one of those things is trying to be a bit better than we normally manage to be.

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As an atheist, I think there are lots of things religions get up to which are of value to non-believers – and one of those things is trying to be a bit better than we normally manage to be.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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