Alain de Botton Quotes, Believe Quotes, Thinking Quotes

.. if you asked most people whether they believed in love or not, they’d probably say they didn’t. Yet that’s not necessarily what they truly think. It’s just the way they defend themselves against what they want. They believe in it, but pretend they don’t until they’re allowed to. Most people would throw away all their cynicism if they could. The majority just never gets the chance.

6 years ago

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

The origins and travels of our purchases remain matters of indifference, although to the more imaginative at least a slight dampness at the bottom of a carton, or an obscure code printed along a computer cable, may hint at processes of manufacture and transport nobler and more mysterious, more worthy of wonder and study, than the very goods themselves.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Hints Quotes , May Quotes

There's a whole category of people who miss out by not allowing themselves to be weird enough.

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

It wasn't only fanatics and drunkards who began conversations with strangers in public.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Stranger Quotes , Conversation Quotes

Why, then, if expensive things cannot bring us remarkable joy, are we so powerfully drawn to them?

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Joy Quotes , Remarkable Quotes

We don't really learn anything properly until there is a problem, until we are in pain, until something fails to go as we had hoped ... We suffer, therefore we think.

6 years ago

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

Being funny should be an incidental byproduct of trying to get to something truthful, not a destination in itself.

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

We are all more intelligent than we are capable, and awareness of the insanity of love has never saved anyone from the disease.

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

Never, ever become a writer. It's a nightmare.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes

Being content is perhaps no less easy than playing the violin well: and requires no less practice.

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

Someone who has thought rationally and deeply about how the body works is likely to arrive at better ideas about how to be healthy than someone who has followed a hunch. Medicine presupposes a hierarchy between the confusion the layperson will be in about what is wrong with him, and the more accurate knowledge available to doctors reasoning logically. At the heart of Epicureanism is the thought that we are as bad at answering the question "What will make me happy?" as "What will make me healthy?" Our souls do not spell out their troubles.

6 years ago

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

To look at the paper is to raise a seashell to one's ear and to be overwhelmed by the roar of humanity.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Humanity Quotes , Looks Quotes

Responsible for wrapping the iron fist of authority in its velvet glove is Jane Axtell, head of the accountancy firm's Human Resources department.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Iron Quotes , Velvet Quotes

Our sense of what is valuable will hence be radically distorted if we must perpetually condemn as tedious everything we lack, simply because we lack it.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Valuable Quotes , Tedious Quotes

We are certainly influenced by role models, and if we are surrounded by images of beautiful rich people, we will start to think that to be beautiful and rich is very important - just as in the Middle Ages, people were surrounded by images of religious piety.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Beautiful Quotes , Religious Quotes

It was no longer her absence that wounded me, but my growing indifference to it. Forgetting, however calming, was also a reminder of infidelity to what I had at one time held so dear.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Infidelity Quotes , Growing Quotes

Despite the best efforts of critics and the hopes of authors, our tastes in books are probably as inherent & unbudgeable as those in food.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Book Quotes , Best Effort Quotes

The assumption is that life doesn't need to be navigated with lessons. You can just do it intuitively. After all, you only need to achieve autonomy from your parents, find a moderately satisfying job, form a relationship, perhaps raise some children, watch the onset of mortality in your parents' generation and eventually in your own, until one day a fatal illness starts gnawing at your innards and you calmly go to the grave, shut the coffin and are done with the self-evident business of life.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Jobs Quotes , Children 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.

6 years ago

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

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.

6 years ago

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