Alain de Botton Quotes, Depressing Quotes, Mean Quotes

He did not mean to depress us, rather to free us from expectations which inspire bitterness. It is consoling, when love has let us down, to hear that happiness was never part of the plan.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Depressing Quotes , Mean Quotes

Anxiety is the handmaiden of contemporary ambition.

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The telephone becomes an instrument of torture in the demonic hands of a beloved who doesn't call.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Hands Quotes , Telephones 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.

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

Distress at losing an object can be as much a frustration at the intellectual mystery of the disappearance as about the loss itself.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Loss Quotes , Frustration 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

Philosophy had supplied Socrates with convictions in which he had been able to have rational, as opposed to hysterical, confidence when faced with disapproval.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Philosophy Quotes , Able Quotes

There are people who say, 'Oh this guy is quite thick.' I think the reason is that, increasingly, I don't mind being simple in terms of literary expression. Others say, 'No, no, no. He went to Cambridge. He got a good degree. He must be Einstein.'

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

Intuition is unconscious accumulated experience informing judgement in real time.

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

You normally have to be bashed about a bit by life to see the point of daffodils, sunsets and uneventful nice days.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Nice Quotes , Sunset Quotes

Unrequited love may be painful, but it is safely painful, because it does not involve inflicting damage on anyone but oneself, a private pain that is as bittersweet as it is self-induced. But as soon as love is reciprocated, one must be prepared to give up the passivity of simply being hurt and take on the responsibility of perpetrating hurt oneself.

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

An argument in a couple: 2 people attempting to introduce each other to important truths - by panicked shouting.

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

Unnatural to expect that learning to be happy should be any easier than, say, learning to play the violin or require any less practice.

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

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

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

Bitterness: anger that forgot where it came from.

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All tours are filled with humiliation. My publisher once hired a private jet to fly me to a venue where 1,000 people were waiting. It almost bankrupted him.

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

For all his understanding of worldly concerns, when it came to fathoming the deeper meaning of his own furious activity, Sir Bob displayed the sort of laziness for which he himself had no patience in others. He appeared to have only a passing interest in the overall purpose of his financial accumulation.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Understanding Quotes , Laziness Quotes

As adults, we try to develop the character traits that would have rescued our parents.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Character Quotes , Parent Quotes

Rather than employing it as a supplement to active, conscious seeing, they used the medium as a substitute, paying less attention to the world than they had done previously, taking it on faith that photography automatically assured them possession of it.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Photography Quotes , Attention Quotes

It is this idea 'decency' should be attached to wealth -and 'indecency'' to poverty - that forms the core of one strand of skeptical complaint against the modern status-ideal. Why should failure to make money be taken as a sign of an unconditionally flawed human being rather than of a fiasco in one particular area if the far larger, more multifaceted, project of leading a good life? Why should both wealth and poverty be read as the predominant guides to an individual's morals ?

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Good Life Quotes , Taken Quotes