Alain de Botton Quotes, Annoyed Quotes

You have to be quite heavily invested in someone to do them the honour of telling them you're annoyed with them.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Annoyed Quotes

He was marked out by his relentless ability to find fault with others' mediocrity - suggesting that a certain type of intelligence may be at heart nothing more or less than a superior capacity for dissatisfaction.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Heart Quotes , Mediocrity Quotes

Those who divorce aren't necessarily the most unhappy, just those neatly able to believe their misery is caused by one other person.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Believe Quotes , Divorce Quotes

Unnatural to expect that learning to be happy should be any easier than, say, learning to play the violin or require any less practice.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Practice Quotes , Play Quotes

Most good thinking has its origin in fear.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Thinking Quotes

We might have been ready to offer sympathy, but in actuality there were stronger reasons to want to congratulate her for having found such a powerful motive to feel sad. We should have envied her for having located someone without whom she so firmly felt she could not survive, beyond the gate let along in a bare student bedroom in a suburb of Rio. If she had been able to view her situation from a sufficient distance, she might have been able to recognise this as one of the high points in her life.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Powerful Quotes , Distance Quotes

Gaffe-focused journalism: revenge of intelligent people who know true evils are out there but lack the access/time to get to them.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Revenge Quotes , Intelligent Quotes

We are sad at home and blame the weather and the ugliness of the buildings, but on the tropical island we learn that the state of the skies and the appearance of our dwellings can never on their own underwrite our joy nor condemn us to misery.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Home Quotes , Dwelling Quotes

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.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Art Quotes , Feelings Quotes

Do you love me enough that I may be weak with you? Everyone loves strength, but do you love me for my weakness? That is the real test.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Real Quotes , Weakness Quotes

There are people who say, 'Oh this guy is quite thick.' I think the reason is that, increasingly, I don't mind being simple in terms of literary expression. Others say, 'No, no, no. He went to Cambridge. He got a good degree. He must be Einstein.'

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Simple Quotes , Thinking Quotes

The fear of saying something stupid (which stupid people never have) has censored far more good ideas than bad ones.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Stupid Quotes , Ideas Quotes

The media insists on taking what someone didn't mean to say as being far closer to the truth than what they did.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Mean Quotes

According to Montaigne, it was the oppressive notion that we had complete mental control over our bodies, and the horror of departing from this portrait of normality, that had left the man unable to perform sexually.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Love Quotes , Men Quotes

Journeys are the midwives of thought. Few places are more conducive to internal conversations than a moving plane, ship or train. There is an almost quaint correlation between what is in front of our eyes and the thoughts we are able to have in our heads: large thoughts at times requiring large views, new thoughts new places. Introspective reflections which are liable to stall are helped along by the flow of the landscape. The mind may be reluctant to think properly when thinking is all it is supposed to do.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Moving Quotes , Eye Quotes

People who readily accept the need for a gym will resist that their personalities might need some work too.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , People Quotes , Personality Quotes

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.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Play Quotes , Judgement Quotes

Only by declaring a book completely finished can one start to see how much remains to be done on it.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Book Quotes , Done Quotes

The inability to live in the present lies in the fear of leaving the sheltered position of anticipation or memory, and so of admitting that this is the only life that one is ever likely (heavenly intervention aside) to live.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Memories Quotes , Lying Quotes

I thought about societies where exceptional fortunes are built up in industries with very little connection to out sincere and significant needs, industries where it is difficult to escape from the disparity between a seriousness of means and a triviality of ends.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Mean Quotes , Connections Quotes