Alain de Botton Quotes, Pain Quotes, Mean Quotes

Must being in love always mean being in pain?

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Pain Quotes , Mean 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

The genius of religions is that they structure the inner life.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Genius Quotes , Structure Quotes

One of the better guarantors of ending up in a good relationship: an advanced capacity to be alone.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Good Relationship Quotes

Only by declaring a book completely finished can one start to see how much remains to be done on it.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Book Quotes , Done Quotes

The attentions of others matter to us because we are afflicted by a congenital uncertainty as to our own value, as a result of which affliction we tend to allow others' appraisals to play a determining role in how we see ourselves. Our sense of identity is held captive by the judgements of those we live among.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Play Quotes , Judgement Quotes

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

6 years ago

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

People only get really interesting when they start to rattle the bars of their cages.

6 years ago

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

My writing always came out of a very personal place, out of an attempt to stay sane.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Writing Quotes

I was uncomfortable writing fiction. My love was the personal essay rather than the novel.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Writing Quotes , Fiction Quotes

It's hard loving those who don't much like themselves: "If you're so great, why would you think I'm so great.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Thinking Quotes , Self Hatred Quotes

[T]he unsympathetic assessments we make of others are usually the result of nothing more sinister than our habit of looking at them in the wrong way, through lenses clouded by distraction, exhaustion and fear, which blind us to the fact that they are really, despite a thousand differences, just altered versions of ourselves: fellow fragile, uncertain, flawed beings likewise craving love and in urgent need of forgiveness.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Assessment Quotes , Differences Quotes

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.

6 years ago

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

Most anger stems from feelings of weakness, sadness and fear: hard to remember when one is at the receiving end of its defiant roar.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Sadness Quotes , Feelings Quotes

One of the unexpectedly important things that art can do for us is to teach us how to suffer more successfully.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Art Quotes , Suffering Quotes

I am in general a very pessimistic person with an optimistic, day to day take on things. The bare facts of life are utterly terrifying. And yet, one can laugh. Indeed, one has to laugh precisely because of the darkness: the nervous laughter of the trenches.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Laughter Quotes , Optimistic Quotes

We read the weird tales in newspapers to crowd out the even weirder stuff inside us.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Crowds Quotes , Stuff Quotes

It would be foolish to describe the logistics hub as merely ugly, for it has the horrifying, soulless, immaculate beauty characteristic of many of the workplaces of the modern world.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Would Be Quotes , World Quotes

We wanted to test each other's capacity for survival: only if we had tried in vain to destroy one another would we know we were safe.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Survival Quotes , Safe Quotes

When you look at the Moon, you think, ‘I’m really small. What are my problems?’ It sets things into perspective. We should all look at the Moon a bit more often.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Motivation Quotes , Inspiration Quotes