Alain de Botton Quotes, Envy Quotes, Trying Quotes

We should keep a careful diary of our moments of envy: they are our covert guides to what we should try to do next.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Envy Quotes , Trying Quotes

Curiosity might be pictured as being made up of chains of small questions extending outwards, sometimes over huge distances, from a central hub composed of a few blunt, large questions.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Distance Quotes , Curiosity 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

Being content is perhaps no less easy than playing the violin well: and requires no less practice.

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

We accept the need to train extensively to fly a plane; but think instinct should be enough for marrying and raising kids.

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

To look at the paper is to raise a seashell to one's ear and to be overwhelmed by the roar of humanity.

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

Art holds out the promise of inner wholeness.

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

Most victories are, in the best way, acts of revenge.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Revenge Quotes , Victory Quotes

There are selections so acute that they come to define a place, with the result that we can no longer travel through that landscape without being reminded of what a great artist noticed there.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Artist Quotes , Greatness Quotes

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

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

He was a volatile mixture of confidence and vulnerability. He could deliver extended monologues on professional matters, then promptly stop in his tracks to peer inquisitively into his guest's eyes for signs of boredom or mockery, being intelligent enough to be unable fully to believe in his own claims to significance. He might, in a past life, have been a particularly canny and sharp-tongued royal advisor.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Believe Quotes , Eye Quotes

The pleasure we derive from journeys is perhaps dependent more on the mindset with which we travel than on the destination we travel to.

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

It is perhaps when our lives are at their most problematic that we are likely to be most receptive to beautiful things.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Beautiful Quotes , Beautiful Things Quotes

Perhaps it is true that we do not really exist until there is someone there to see us existing, we cannot properly speak until there is someone who can understand what we are saying in essence, we are not wholly alive until we are loved.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Essence Quotes , Alive Quotes

Curiosity takes ignorance seriously - and is confident enough to admit when it's in the dark. It is aware of not knowing. And then it sets out to do something about it.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Ignorance Quotes , Dark Quotes

what we call a home is merely any place that succeeds in making more consistenly available to us the important truths which the wider world ignores, or which our distracted and irresolute selves have trouble holding onto." (p123) Architecture of Happiness

6 years ago

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

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

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

Don't despair: despair suggests you are in total control and know what is coming. You don't - surrender to events with hope.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Despair Quotes , Events Quotes

It's as though either you accept [religious] doctrine and then you can have all the nice stuff, or you reject the doctrine and you're living in some kind of spiritual wasteland under the guidance of CNN and Walmart.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , God Quotes , Spiritual Quotes

The happiness that may emerge from taking a second look is central to Proust's therapeutic conception. It reveals the extent to which our dissatisfactions may be the result of failing to look properly at our lives rather than the result of anything inherently deficient about them.

6 years ago

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