Alain de Botton Quotes, Looks Quotes, Way Quotes

The only way to be happy is to realise how much depends on how you look at things

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

It's very hard to respect people on holiday - everybody looks so silly at the beach, it makes you hate humanity - but when you see people at their work they elicit respect, whether it's a mechanic, a stonemason or an accountant.

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

Maturity: knowing where you're crazy, trying to warn others of the fact and striving to keep yourself under control.

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For paranoia about 'what other people think' : remember that only some hate, a very few love - and almost all just don't care.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Hate Quotes , Thinking 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

Because the rhythm of conversation makes no allowance for dead periods, because the presence of others calls for continuous responses, we are left to regret the inanity of what we say, and the missed opportunity of what we do not.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Regret Quotes , Opportunity 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?"

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Successful Quotes , Years Quotes

The bourgeois thinkers of the eighteenth century thus turned Aristotle's formula on its head: satisfactions which the Greek philosopher had identified with leisure were now transposed to the sphere of work, while tasks lacking in any financial reward were drained of all significance and left to the haphazard attentions of decadent dilettantes. It now seemed as impossible that one could be happy and unproductive as it had once seemed unlikely that one could work and be human.

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Every realistic picture represents a choice as to which features of reality should be given prominence; no painting ever captures the whole.

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I went to church and couldn't swallow it. The music was nice but I don't belong there.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Nice 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.'

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

Our bodies hold our minds hostage to their whims and rhythms.

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Memory is... similar to anticipation: an instrument of simplification and selection.

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A danger of travel is that we see things at the wrong time, before we have had a chance to build up the necessary receptivity and when new information is therefore as useless and fugitive as necklace beads without a connecting chain.

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Once I began to consider everything as being of potential interest, objects released latent layers of value.

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The finest proof of our loyalty toward one another was our monstrous disloyalties towards everyone else.

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The greatest works of art speak to us without knowing us.

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It seems the only way to write a half decent book is to worry oneself sick on an hourly basis that one is producing a complete disaster.

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Bad art might be defined as a series of bad choices about what to show and what to leave out.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Art Quotes , Choices 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