Alain de Botton Quotes, Writing Quotes, Trying Quotes

I am conscious of trying to stretch the boundaries of non-fiction writing. It's always surprised me how little attention many non-fiction writers pay to the formal aspects of their work.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Writing Quotes , Trying Quotes

Must being in love always mean being in pain?

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

The real issue is not whether baking biscuits is meaningful, but the extent to which the activity can seem to be so after it has been continuously stretched and subdivided across five thousand lives.

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

We tend to believe in the modern secular world that if you tell someone something once, they'll remember it. ... Religions go, "Nonsense. You need to keep repeating the lesson 10 times a day. So get on your knees and repeat it." That's what all religions tell us: "Get on your knees and repeat it 10 or 20 or 15 times a day." Otherwise our minds are like sieves.

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

Our homes do not have to offer us permanent occupancy or store our clothes to merit the name. To speak of home in relation to a building is simply to recognise its harmony with our own prized internal song. Home can be an airport or a library, a garden or a motorway diner.

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

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

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Annoyed Quotes

True respectability stems not from the will of the majority but from proper reasoning.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Majority Quotes , Stem Quotes

The greatest difficulty of Travel is that one is forced to take oneself along.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Difficulty Quotes

When I see someone like Richard Dawkins, I see my father. I grew up with that. I'm basically the child of Richard Dawkins.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Children Quotes , Father Quotes

The problem is if you really believe in a society where those who merit to get to the top, get to the top, you’ll also, by implication … believe in a society where those who deserve to get to the bottom also get to the bottom and stay there.

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

Pegging your contentment to the overall state of the world rather than of your own life: the basis of morality, or a sort of madness?

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Contentment Quotes , World Quotes

Taking photographs can assuage the itch for possession sparked by the beauty of a place; our anxiety over losing a precious scene can decline with every click of the shutter.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Photography Quotes , Anxiety 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.

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

A virtuous, ordinary life, striving for wisdom but never far from folly, is achievement enough.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Achievement Quotes , Ordinary Quotes

Getting to the top has an unfortunate tendency to persuade people that the system is OK after all.

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

Architects themselves tend to shy away from the word, preferring instead to talk about the manipulation of space.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Space Quotes , Shy Quotes

Most of us stand poised at the edge of brilliance, haunted by the knowledge of our proximity, yet still demonstrably on the wrong side of the line, our dealings with reality undermined by a range of minor yet critical psychological flaws (a little too much optimism, an unprocessed rebelliousness, a fatal impatience or sentimentality). We are like an exquisite high-speed aircraft which for lack of a tiny part is left stranded beside the runway, rendered slower than a tractor or bicycle.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Reality Quotes , Optimism Quotes

It should not be Illiers-Combray that we visit: a genuine homage to Proust would be to look at our world through his eyes, not look at his world through our eyes.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Eye Quotes , Our World Quotes

Instead of bringing back 1600 plants, we might return from our journeys with a collection of small unfêted but life-enhancing thoughts.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Travel Quotes , Journey Quotes

Although I don't believe in God, Bach's music shows me what a love of God must feel like.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Believe Quotes , God Love Quotes