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  • Alain de Botton Quotes   372
  • It seems, in fact, that the more advanced a society is, the greater will be its interest in ruined things, for it will see in them a redemptively sobering reminder of the fragility of its own achievements. Ruins pose a direct challenge to our concern with power and rank, with bustle and fame. They puncture the inflated folly of our exhaustive and frenetic pursuit of wealth.
  • 6 years ago



    Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Achievement Quotes , Challenges Quotes
  • To cut out every negative root would simultaneously mean choking off positive elements that might arise from it further up the stem of the plant. We should not feel embarrassed by our difficulties, only by our failure to grow anything beautiful from them.
  • 6 years ago



    Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Beautiful Quotes , Mean Quotes
  • Objectively good spaces to work rarely end up being so; in their faultlessness, quiet and well-equipped studios have a habit of rendering the fear of failure overwhelming. Original thoughts are like shy animals. We sometimes have to look the other way - towards a busy street or terminal - before they run out of their burrows.
  • 6 years ago



    Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Running Quotes , Animal Quotes
  • It is not just nature that defies us. Human life is as overwhelming... If we spend time in it [the vast spaces of nature], they may help us to accept more graciously the great, unfathomable events that molest our lives and will inevitably return us to dust.
  • 6 years ago



    Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Life Quotes , Dust Quotes
  • In the works of Lucretius, we find two reasons why we shouldn't worry about death. If you have had a successful life, Lucretius tell us, there's no reason to mind its end. And, if you haven't had a good time, "Why do you seek to add more years, which would also pass but ill?"
  • 6 years ago



    Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Successful Quotes , Years Quotes
  • 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
  • 6 years ago



    Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Believe Quotes , Mean Quotes
  • I never wavered in my certainty that God did not exist. I was simply liberated by the thought that there might be a way to engage with religion without having to subscribe to its supernatural content - a way, to put it in more abstract terms, to think about Fathers without upsetting my respectful memory of my own father. I recognized that my continuing resistance to theories of an afterlife or of heavenly residents was no justification for giving up on the music, buildings, prayers, rituals, feasts, shrines, pilgrimages, communal meals and illustrated manuscripts of the faiths.
  • 6 years ago



    Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Atheist Quotes , Giving Up Quotes