Alain de Botton Quotes, People Quotes, Accepting Quotes

How generous was it to offer gifts to people one knew would never accept them?

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

It is perhaps sad books that best console us when we are sad.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Book Quotes , Sadness 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

One of our major flaws, and causes of unhappiness, is that we find it hard to take note of appreciate and be grateful for what is always around us. We suffer because we lose sight of the value of what is before us and yearn, often unfairly, for the imagined attraction elsewhere.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Gratitude Quotes , Grateful Quotes

Wealth is not an absolute. It is relative to desire. Every time we yearn for something we cannot afford, we grow poorer, whatever our resources. And every time we feel satisfied with what we have, we can be counted as rich, however little we may actually possess.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Desire Quotes , May Quotes

One of the best protections against disappointment is to have a lot going on.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Disappointment 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

A world where a majority had imbibed the lessons implicit within tragic art would be one in which the consequences of our failures would necessarily cease to weigh upon us so heavily.

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

Her lie was symptomatic of a certain pride she took in mocking the romantic, in being unsentimental, matter-of-fact, stoic; yet at heart she was the oppo site: idealistic, dreamy, giving, and deeply attached to everything she liked verbally to dismiss as "mushy.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Lying Quotes , Heart 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

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

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Majority Quotes , Stem 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

There is a devilishly direct relationship between the significance of an idea and how nervous we become at the prospect of having to think about it.

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

Our sadness won’t be of the searing kind but more like a blend of joy and melancholy: joy at the perfection we see before us, melancholy at an awareness of how seldom we are sufficiently blessed to encounter anything of its kind. The flawless object throws into perspective the mediocrity that surrounds it. We are reminded of the way we would wish things always to be and of how incomplete our lives remain.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Blessed Quotes , Sadness 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

So many complaints boil down to the belly ache of the fragile, mortal, ignored ego in a vast and indifferent universe.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Ego Quotes , Ignored 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.

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

The happiness that may emerge from taking a second look is central to Proust's therapeutic conception. It reveals the extent to which our dissatisfactions may be the result of failing to look properly at our lives rather than the result of anything inherently deficient about them.

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

Taking photographs can assuage the itch for possession sparked by the beauty of a place; our anxiety over losing a precious scene can decline with every click of the shutter.

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

At the beginning of human history, as we struggled to light fires and to chisel fallen trees into rudimentary canoes, who could have predicted that long after we had managed to send men to the moon and areoplanes to Australasia, we would still have such trouble knowing how to tolerate ourselves, forgive our loved ones, and apologise for our tantrums?

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Moon Quotes , Men Quotes