Alain de Botton Quotes, Self Quotes, Imagination Quotes

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.

6 years ago

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

I am in general a very pessimistic person with an optimistic, day to day take on things. The bare facts of life are utterly terrifying. And yet, one can laugh. Indeed, one has to laugh precisely because of the darkness: the nervous laughter of the trenches.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Laughter Quotes , Optimistic Quotes

Insomnia is a glamorous term for thoughts you forgot to have in the day.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Pain Quotes , Insomnia Quotes

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

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Successful Quotes , Incentives Quotes

I learnt to stop fantasising about the perfect job or the perfect relationship because that can actually be an excuse for not living.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Jobs Quotes , Perfect Quotes

One of the better guarantors of ending up in a good relationship: an advanced capacity to be alone.

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Many moments in religion seem attractive to me even though I can't believe in any of it.

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

Literature deeply stands opposed to the dominant value system-the one that rewards money and power. Writers are on the other side-they make us sympathetic to ideas and feelings that are of deep importance but can’t afford airtime in a commercialized, status-consciou s, and cynical world.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Ideas Quotes , Cynical Quotes

Art holds out the promise of inner wholeness.

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

The materialistic view of happiness of our age starkly revealed in our understanding of the word "luxury.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Views Quotes , Luxury Quotes

The real issue is not whether baking biscuits is meaningful, but the extent to which the activity can seem to be so after it has been continuously stretched and subdivided across five thousand lives.

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

In the gap between who we wish one day to be and who we are at present, must come pain, anxiety, envy and humiliation.

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

A danger of travel is that we see things at the wrong time, before we have had a chance to build up the necessary receptivity and when new information is therefore as useless and fugitive as necklace beads without a connecting chain.

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

There's a whole category of people who miss out by not allowing themselves to be weird enough.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , People Quotes , Missing 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

We are tempted to believe that certain achievements and possessions will give us enduring satisfaction. We are invited to imagine ourselves scaling the steep cliff face of happiness in order to reach a wide, high plateau on which we will live out the rest of our lives; we are not reminded that soon after gaining the summit, we will be called down again into fresh lowlands of anxiety and desire.

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

Although I don't believe in God, Bach's music shows me what a love of God must feel like.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Believe Quotes , God Love Quotes

The dream of the news is that it makes us care about other people and situations. But we cannot identify with people to whom we haven't been introduced. Humans will only respond to art, to people who are skilled in making you care.

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

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

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

Year-end financial statements express a truth about office life which is no less irrefutable yet also, in the end, no less irrelevant or irritating than an evolutionary biologist's proud reminder that the purpose of existence lies in the propagation of our genes.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Lying Quotes , Years Quotes