Alain de Botton Quotes
In their different ways, art and philosophy help us, in Schopenhauer's words, to turn pain into knowledge.
Quotes to Explore
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I applied to only one college - the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania - and was fortunate to be accepted. After graduation, I headed to Wall Street and worked as I had dreamed.
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I can enjoy anywhere, and I can leave it. Life is about moving on.
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I'm an optimist about other people. I'm not an optimist about myself.
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Flipping through the 'Toronto Star' one day in 2008, I noticed a piece about a phenomenal boxer from the Philippines who had won several different titles in several different weight divisions. Manny Pacquiao's rise from heart-crushing poverty to the top ranks of his sport was astounding.
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Goals enable you to do more for yourself and others, too.
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I like to have fun, but I don't think of myself as being funny. But I'm a big jokester, so I make fun of myself a lot!
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I never felt a need to manipulate my career from the outside - try to be someone I wasn't to get ahead.
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I'm happy pretty well anywhere on this big, beautiful planet.
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My grandmother's first husband was a spiritualist medium. What fascinates me about that is the balance between conviction and sincerity and trickery, which is also something that novelists are very familiar with.
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We shot 'Telusa Telusa' song in Bolivia. It took us 50 hours to get to the location. We shot in high altitudes, and oxygen cylinders were kept handy.
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My brother married young, and his is the best marriage I know.
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'OLTL' has now allowed me to sing through the character as Blair. If you've followed my 20-some-odd-year career, you know I am a singer.
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The thing that I really look for in people is enthusiasm and excitement and, not to sound really sappy, that fire in their eyes.
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Horrors, I believe, should be original - the use of common myths and legends being a weakening influence.
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I feel as if I've been fairly successful with maintaining a cohesive tone between the work I make as a photographer and as a director.
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Habit is a great deadener.
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I believe in music.
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If I can't do high kicks or dance in it, then I won't wear it.
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I'm reading a lot of poetry because it's a lot easier to dip in and dip out when you've got 10 minutes to yourself.
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Music just runs in my family. My dad and my uncles are a gospel quartet, Latimore Brothers. They've been doing their thing ever since I was a kid, so I just kind of grew up around that.
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I have, I admit, a low tolerance for detached chronicling and cool analysis.
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Comedians take a neat situation and turn it into a mess. And in my books I do the same thing, but it's the other way around. I like to mess around with mess. A mess is only a mess because someone tells you it is.
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All you can hope for when you get a book adapted for TV is that you get a good actor and not some muppet off 'EastEnders.'
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In their different ways, art and philosophy help us, in Schopenhauer's words, to turn pain into knowledge.
