Alain de Botton Quotes, Hopeful Quotes, Angry Quotes

We will cease to be angry once we cease to be so hopeful.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Hopeful Quotes , Angry Quotes

So many complaints boil down to the belly ache of the fragile, mortal, ignored ego in a vast and indifferent universe.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Ego Quotes , Ignored Quotes

What I want to argue for is not that we should give up on our ideas of success, but that we should make sure that they are our own. We should focus in on our ideas and make sure that we own them, that we're truly the authors of our own ambitions. Because it's bad enough not getting what you want, but it's even worse to have an idea of what it is you want and find out at the end of the journey that it isn't, in fact, what you wanted all along.

6 years ago

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

We each appear to hold within ourselves a range of divergent views as to our native qualities.. And amid such uncertainty, we typically turn to the wider world to settle the question of our significance.. we seem beholden to affections of others to endure ourselves.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Views Quotes , Quality Quotes

Most of us still caged within careers chosen for us by our not entirely worldly 18-22 year old selves.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Self Quotes , Years 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

There is a longing for a return to a time without the need for choices, free of the regret at the inevitable loss that all choice (however wonderful) has entailed.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Regret Quotes , Loss Quotes

The problem isn't so much finding good ideas (there is no shortage) as embedding the ones we have into everyday practice.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Practice Quotes , Ideas Quotes

Happiness may be difficult to obtain. The obstacles are not primarily financial.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , May Quotes , Obstacles Quotes

The company of certain people may excite our generosity and sensitivity, while that of others awakens our competitiveness and envy.

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

Blind impatience is equally evident in the fruit section. Our ancestors might have delighted in the occasional handful of berries found on the underside of a bush in late summer, viewing it as a sign of the unexpected munificence of a divine creator, but we became modern when we gave up on awaiting sporadic gifts from above and sought to render any pleasing sensation immediately and repeatedly available.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Summer Quotes , Berries Quotes

We need a home in the psychological sense as much as we need one in the physical: to compensate for a vulnerability. We need a refuge to shore up our states of mind, because so much of the world is opposed to our allegiances. We need our rooms to align us to desirable versions of ourselves and to keep alive the important, evanescent sides of us.

6 years ago

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

If our lives are dominated by a search for happiness, then perhaps few activities reveal as much about the dynamics of this quest - in all its ardour and paradoxes - than our travels.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Happiness Quotes , Quests Quotes

The most attractive are not those who allow us to kiss them at once [we soon feel ungrateful] or those who never allow us to kiss them [we soon forget them], but those who coyly lead us between the two extremes.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Kissing Quotes , Two Quotes

The only people we can think of as normal are those we don't yet know very well.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Thinking Quotes , People 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.

6 years ago

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

Never, ever become a writer. It's a nightmare.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes

It is in books, poems, paintings which often give us the confidence to take seriously feelings in ourselves that we might otherwise never have thought to acknowledge.

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

We are presented with an unpleasant choice between either committing to peculiar concepts about immaterial deities or letting go entirely of a host of consoling, subtle or just charming rituals for which we struggle to find equivalents in secular society.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Letting Go Quotes , Struggle Quotes

When work is not going well, it's useful to remember that our identities stretch beyond what is on the business card, that we were people long before we became workers - and will continue to be human once we have put our tools down forever.

6 years ago

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