Alain de Botton Quotes, People Quotes, Tendencies Quotes

Getting to the top has an unfortunate tendency to persuade people that the system is OK after all.

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

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As we write, so we build: to keep a record of what matters to us.

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The price we have paid for expecting to be so much more than our ancestors is a perpetual anxiety that we are far from being all we might be.

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Every realistic picture represents a choice as to which features of reality should be given prominence; no painting ever captures the whole.

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To be shown love is to feel ourselves the object of concern: our presence is noted, our name is registered, our views are listened to, our failings are treated with indulgence and our needs are ministered to. And under such care, we flourish.

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To be loved by someone is to realize how much they share the same needs that lie at the heart of our own attraction to them. Albert Camus suggested that we fall in love with people because, from the outside, they look so whole, physically whole and emotionally 'together' - when subjectively we feel dispersed and confused. We would not love if there were no lack within us, but we are offended by the discovery of a similar lack in the other. Expecting to find the answer, we find only the duplicate of our own problem.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Falling In Love Quotes , Lying 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.

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Kant and Hegel are interesting thinkers. But I am happy to insist that they are also terrible writers.

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What we find exotic abroad may be what we hunger for in vain at home.

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The more dignity is widely and freely available in a society, the less people want to be famous.

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It is the most ambitious and driven among us who are the most sorely in need of having our reckless hopes dampened through immersive dousings in the darkness which religions have explored. This is a particular priority for secular Americans, perhaps the most anxious and disappointed people on earth, for their nation infuses them with the most extreme hopes about what they may be able to achieve in their working lives and relationships.

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We keep a special place in our hearts for people who refuse to be impressed by us.

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On paper, being good sounds great but a lot depends on the atmosphere of the workplace or community we live in. We tend to become good or bad depending on the cues sent out within a particular space.

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It is no coincidence that the Western attraction to sublime landscapes developed at precisely the moment when traditional beliefs in God began to wane.

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Work finally begins when the fear of doing nothing exceeds the fear of doing it badly.

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Literature deserves its prestige for one reason above all others - because it's a tool to help us live and die with a little bit more wisdom, goodness, and sanity.

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Memory is... similar to anticipation: an instrument of simplification and selection.

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In a secularising world, art has replaced religion as a touchstone of our reverence and devotion.

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If one felt successful, there'd be so little incentive to be successful.

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