Alain de Botton Quotes, Inspiring Quotes, Maturity Quotes

Maturity: the confidence to have no opinions on many things.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Inspiring Quotes , Maturity Quotes

Newspapers are being read all around. The point is not, of course, to glean new information, but rather to coax the mind out of its sleep-induced introspective temper.

6 years ago

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

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

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

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

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

Writing a book has about it some of the anxiety of telling a joke and having to wait several years to know whether or not it was funny.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Book Quotes , Writing 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 very act of drawing an object, however badly, swiftly takes the drawer from a woolly sense of what the object looks like to a precise awareness of its component parts and particularities.

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

It's perhaps easier now than ever before to make a good living; it's perhaps harder than ever before to stay calm, to be free of career anxiety.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Motivation Quotes , Inspiration 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

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

It seems that most of us could benefit from a brush with a near-fatal disaster to help us recognise the important things that we are too defeated or embittered to recognise from day to day.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Important Quotes , Benefits Quotes

We envy only those whom we feel ourselves to be like; we envy only members of our reference group. There are few successes more unendurable than those of our close friends.

6 years ago

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

We are sensitized by the books we read. And the more books we read, and the deeper their lessons sink into us, the more pairs of glasses we have. And those glasses enable us to see things we would have otherwise missed.

6 years ago

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

Dreams reveal we never quite get 'over' anything: it's all still in there somewhere.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Dream Quotes , Get Over Quotes

The study of maps and the perusal of travel books aroused in me a secret fascination that was at times almost irresistible.

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

There is always the option of being emotionally lazy, that is, of quoting.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Lazy Quotes , Sloth Quotes

Unhappiness can stem from having only one perspective to play with.

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

It is by finding out what something is not that one comes closest to understanding what it is.

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

To cut out every negative root would simultaneously mean choking off positive elements that might arise from it further up the stem of the plant. We should not feel embarrassed by our difficulties, only by our failure to grow anything beautiful from them.

6 years ago

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