Alain de Botton Quotes, Depressing Quotes, Mean Quotes

He did not mean to depress us, rather to free us from expectations which inspire bitterness. It is consoling, when love has let us down, to hear that happiness was never part of the plan.

6 years ago

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

The Arab-Israeli conflict is also in many ways a conflict about status: it's a war between two peoples who feel deeply humiliated by the other, who want the other to respect them. Battles over status can be even more intractable than those over land or water or oil.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , War Quotes , Land Quotes

An argument in a couple: 2 people attempting to introduce each other to important truths - by panicked shouting.

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

Arguments are like eels: however logical, they may slip from the minds weak grasp unless fixed there by imagery and style.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Eels Quotes , Style Quotes

A dominant impulse on encountering beauty is to wish to hold on to it, to possess it and give it weight in one’s life. There is an urge to say, ‘I was here, I saw this and it mattered to me.

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

One rarely falls in love without being as much attracted to what is interestingly wrong with someone as what is objectively healthy.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Falling In Love Quotes , Health Quotes

It seems that most of us could benefit from a brush with a near-fatal disaster to help us recognise the important things that we are too defeated or embittered to recognise from day to day.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Important Quotes , Benefits Quotes

Literature deserves its prestige for one reason above all others - because it's a tool to help us live and die with a little bit more wisdom, goodness, and sanity.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Tools Quotes , Literature Quotes

Being incomprehensible offers unparalleled protection against having nothing to say...but writing with simplicity requires courage, for there is a danger that one will be overlooked, dismissed as simpleminded by those with a tenacious belief that the impassable prose is a hallmark of intelligence.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Writing Quotes , Simplicity 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

The challenge of modern relationships: how to prove more interesting than the other's smartphone.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Smartphones Quotes , Interesting Quotes

I feel that the great challenge of our time is the communication of ideas.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Communication Quotes , Ideas 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

Life seems to be a process of replacing one anxiety with another and substituting one desire for another--which is not to say that we should never strive to overcome any of our anxieties or fulfil any of our desires, but rather to suggest that we should perhaps build into our strivings an awareness of the way our goals promise us a respite and a resolution that they cannot, by definition, deliver.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Goal Quotes , Anxiety Quotes

Rather than saying 'I hate mess', it might draw more compassion to say, 'mess terrifies me as a harbinger of catastrophe'.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Hate Quotes , Compassion Quotes

The mind may be reluctant to think properly when thinking is all it is supposed to do; the task can be as paralysing as having to tell a joke or mimic an accent on demand.

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

What am I supposed to do here? What am I supposed to think?

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes

Dreams reveal we never quite get 'over' anything: it's all still in there somewhere.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Dream Quotes , Get Over Quotes

It is no coincidence that the Western attraction to sublime landscapes developed at precisely the moment when traditional beliefs in God began to wane.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Sublime Quotes , Religion Quotes

I'm also interested in the modern suggestion that you can have a combination of love and sex in a marriage - which no previous society has ever believed.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Sex Quotes , Suggestions Quotes