Alain de Botton Quotes, Layers Quotes, Interest Quotes

Once I began to consider everything as being of potential interest, objects released latent layers of value.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Layers Quotes , Interest Quotes

The true nature of bureaucracy may be nowhere more obvious to the observer than in a developing country, for only there will it still be made manifest by the full complement of documents, files, veneered desks and cabinets - which convey the strict and inverse relationship between productivity and paperwork.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Country Quotes , May 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.

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

The architects who benefit us most maybe those generous enough to lay aside their claims to genius in order to devote themselves to assembling graceful but predominantly unoriginal boxes. Architecture should have the confidence and the kindness to be a little boring.

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

Our minds are susceptible to the influence of external voices telling us what we require to be satisfied, voices that may drown out the faint sounds emitted by our souls and distract us from the careful, arduous task of accurately naming our priorities.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Voice Quotes , Priorities Quotes

I assemble my ideas in pieces on a computer file, then gradually find a place for them on a piece of scaffolding I erect.

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

Responsible for wrapping the iron fist of authority in its velvet glove is Jane Axtell, head of the accountancy firm's Human Resources department.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Iron Quotes , Velvet 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

You have to be quite heavily invested in someone to do them the honour of telling them you're annoyed with them.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Annoyed Quotes

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

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Writing Quotes , Doing Nothing Quotes

Our jobs make relentless calls on a narrow band of our faculties, reducing our chances of achieving rounded personalities and leaving us to suspect (often in the gathering darkness of a Sunday evening) that much of who we are, or could be, has gone unexplored.

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

Anxiety is the handmaiden of contemporary ambition.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Ambition Quotes , Anxiety Quotes

Being incomprehensible offers unparalleled protection against having nothing to say...but writing with simplicity requires courage, for there is a danger that one will be overlooked, dismissed as simpleminded by those with a tenacious belief that the impassable prose is a hallmark of intelligence.

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

One rarely falls in love without being as much attracted to what is interestingly wrong with someone as what is objectively healthy.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Falling In Love Quotes , Health Quotes

[T]he unsympathetic assessments we make of others are usually the result of nothing more sinister than our habit of looking at them in the wrong way, through lenses clouded by distraction, exhaustion and fear, which blind us to the fact that they are really, despite a thousand differences, just altered versions of ourselves: fellow fragile, uncertain, flawed beings likewise craving love and in urgent need of forgiveness.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Assessment Quotes , Differences Quotes

For paranoia about 'what other people think' : remember that only some hate, a very few love - and almost all just don't care.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Hate Quotes , Thinking 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

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

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

It seemed an advantage to be traveling alone. Our responses to the world are crucially moulded by the company we keep, for we temper our curiosity to fit in with the expectations of others...Being closely observed by a companion can also inhibit our observation of others; then, too, we may become caught up in adjusting ourselves to the companion's questions and remarks, or feel the need to make ourselves seem more normal than is good for our curiosity.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Company We Keep Quotes , Expectations Quotes