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Alain de Botton

Alain de Botton Quotes

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Famous Alain de Botton Quotes

“We don't exist unless there is someone who can see us existing, what we say has no meaning until someone can understand, while to be surrounded by friends is constantly to have our identity confirmed; their knowledge and care for us have the power to pull us from our numbness. In small comments, many of them teasing, they reveal they know our foibles and except them and so, in turn, accept that we have a place in the world.”

KnowsWorldCareTurnsAcceptingIdentityCommentPlaces In The WorldTeaseNumbnessFoiblesSurrounded By Friends
Author:Alain de Botton
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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.”

KnowsWorldWantGivingDifferentHomeRealityForgetStreetsPerspectiveGiving UpNormalAlternativesJust OneNever Giving Up
Author:Alain de Botton
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“to design means forcing ourselves to unlearn what we believe we already know, patiently to take apart the mechanisms behind our reflexes and to acknowledge the mystery and stupefying complexity of everyday gestures like switching off a light of turning on a tap”

KnowsBelieveMeanLightBehindsMysteryDesignEverydayAcknowledgeComplexityMechanismGesturesReflexesUnlearnSwitchingSwitching Off
Book:The Architecture of Happiness
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“Every fall into love involves the triumph of hope over self-knowledge. We fall in love hoping we won't find in another what we know is in ourselves, all the cowardice, weakness, laziness, dishonesty, compromise, and stupidity. We throw a cordon of love around the chosen one and decide that everything within it will somehow be free of our faults. We locate inside another a perfection that eludes us within ourselves, and through our union with the beloved hope to maintain (against the evidence of all self-knowledge) a precarious faith in our species.”

KnowsSelfFallWeaknessEvidencePerfectionUnionsFaultsSpeciesFalling In LoveStupidityChosenCompromiseTriumphBelovedCowardiceLazinessSelf KnowledgeDishonestyPrecariousEludeChosen OneElude Us
Book:On Love: A Novel
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“Perhaps the easiest people to fall in love with are those about whom we know nothing. Romances are never as pure as those we imagine during long train journeys, as we secretly contemplate a beautiful person who is gazing out of the window – a perfect love story interrupted only when the beloved looks back into the carriage and starts up a dull conversation about the excessive price of the on-board sandwiches with a neighbour or blows her nose aggressively into a handkerchief.”

PeopleKnowsLooksPersonsLongStoriesBeautifulRomanceFallPerfectImagineJourneyPureConversationWindowTrainFalling In LoveBlowLove StoryNosesBelovedBoardsDullContemplatingNeighbourSandwichesInterruptedGazingCarriagesPerfect LoveHandkerchiefsBeautiful Person
Book:On Love: A Novel
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