Alain de Botton Quotes, Hate Quotes, Enemy Quotes

To one's enemies: "I hate myself more than you ever could.

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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.

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

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

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Sublime places repeat in grand terms a lesson that ordinary life typically teaches viciously: that the universe is mightier than we are, that we are frail and temporary and have no alternative but to accept limitations on our will; that we must bow to necessities greater than ourselves.

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People who readily accept the need for a gym will resist that their personalities might need some work too.

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Most of us stand poised at the edge of brilliance, haunted by the knowledge of our proximity, yet still demonstrably on the wrong side of the line, our dealings with reality undermined by a range of minor yet critical psychological flaws (a little too much optimism, an unprocessed rebelliousness, a fatal impatience or sentimentality). We are like an exquisite high-speed aircraft which for lack of a tiny part is left stranded beside the runway, rendered slower than a tractor or bicycle.

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The only possible way to begin a book is to tell oneself that its eventual failure is guaranteed — but survivable.

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What is fascinating about marriage is why anyone wants to get married.

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True respectability stems not from the will of the majority but from proper reasoning.

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In their different ways, art and philosophy help us, in Schopenhauer's words, to turn pain into knowledge.

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

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Art cannot single-handedly create enthusiasm... it merely contributes to enthusiasm and guides us to be more conscious of feelings that we might previously have experienced only tentatively or hurriedly.

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Our disrespect for thinking: someone sitting in a chair, gazing out of a window blankly, always described as 'doing nothing'.

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That said, deciding to avoid other people does not necessarily equate with having no desire whatsoever for company; it may simply reflect a dissatisfaction with what—or who—is available. Cynics are, in the end, only idealists with awkwardly high standards. In Chamfort's words, 'It is sometimes said of a man who lives alone that he does not like society. This is like saying of a man that he does not like going for walks because he is not fond of walking at night in the forêt de Bondy.

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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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By travelling across frontiers, on horseback and in the imagination, Montaigne invited us to to exchange local prejudices and the self division they induced for less constraining identities as citizens of the world.

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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 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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In the oasis complex, the thirsty man images he sees water, palm trees, and shade not because he has evidence for the belief, but because he has a need for it. Desperate needs bring about a hallucination of their solution: thirst hallucinates water, the need for love hallucinates a prince or princess. The oasis complex is never a complete delusion: the man in the desert does see something on the horizon. It is just that the palms have withered, the well is dry, and the place is infected with locusts.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Love Quotes , Princess Quotes