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  • Alain de Botton Quotes   372
  • 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 reality, the likelihood of reaching the pinnacle of capitalist society today is only marginally better than were the chances of being accepted into the French nobility four centuries ago, though at least an aristocratic age was franker, and therefore kinder, about the odds. It did not relentlessly play up the possibilities open to all, and so, in turn, did not cruelly equate an ordinary life with a failed one.
  • 6 years ago



    Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Reality Quotes , Odds 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
  • The true nature of bureaucracy may be nowhere more obvious to the observer than in a developing country, for only there will it still be made manifest by the full complement of documents, files, veneered desks and cabinets - which convey the strict and inverse relationship between productivity and paperwork.
  • 6 years ago



    Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Country Quotes , May Quotes
  • Differ though we might with Christianity's view of what precisely our souls need, it is hard to discredit the provocative underlying thesis, which seems no less relevant in the secular realm than in the religious one-that we have within us a precious, childlike, vulnerable core which we should nourish and nurture on its turbulent journey through life.
  • 6 years ago



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