Alain de Botton Quotes, Communication Quotes, Ideas Quotes

I feel that the great challenge of our time is the communication of ideas.

6 years ago

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

Out of the millions of people we live among, most of whom we habitually ignore and are ignored by in turn, there are always a few that hold hostage our capacity for happiness, whom we could recognize by their smell alone and whom we would rather die than be without.

6 years ago

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

Mental health: having enough safe places in your mind for your thoughts to settle.

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Gaffe-focused journalism: revenge of intelligent people who know true evils are out there but lack the access/time to get to them.

6 years ago

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Pick up any newspaper or magazine, open the TV, and you'll be bombarded with suggestions of how to have a successful life. Some of these suggestions are deeply unhelpful to our own projects and priorities - and we should take care.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Successful Quotes , Bombarded By 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.

6 years ago

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

Pegging your contentment to the overall state of the world rather than of your own life: the basis of morality, or a sort of madness?

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

No one is able to produce a great work of art without experience, nor achieve a worldly position immediately, nor be a great lover at the first attempt; and in the interval between initial failure and subsequent success, in the gap between who we wish one day to be and who we are at present, must come pain, anxiety, envy and humiliation. We suffer because we cannot spontaneously master the ingredients of fulfillment.

6 years ago

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

Socrates, on being insulted in the marketplace, asked by a passerby, "Don't you worry about being called names?" retorted, "Why? Do you think I should resent it if an ass had kicked me?

6 years ago

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

There may be significant things to learn about people by looking at what annoys them most.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Significant Things Quotes , People 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

Artistic accounts involve severe abbreviations of what reality will force upon us.

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We used to build temples, and museums are about as close as secular society dares to go in facing up to the idea that a good building can change your life (and a bad one ruin it).

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Museums Quotes , Secular Society Quotes

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 , May Quotes , Littles Quotes

The attentions of others matter to us because we are afflicted by a congenital uncertainty as to our own value, as a result of which affliction we tend to allow others' appraisals to play a determining role in how we see ourselves. Our sense of identity is held captive by the judgements of those we live among.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Play Quotes , Judgement 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.

6 years ago

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

When work is not going well, it's useful to remember that our identities stretch beyond what is on the business card, that we were people long before we became workers - and will continue to be human once we have put our tools down forever.

6 years ago

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

Arguments are like eels: however logical, they may slip from the minds weak grasp unless fixed there by imagery and style.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Eels Quotes , Style Quotes

Because the rhythm of conversation makes no allowance for dead periods, because the presence of others calls for continuous responses, we are left to regret the inanity of what we say, and the missed opportunity of what we do not.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Regret Quotes , Opportunity Quotes

What am I supposed to do here? What am I supposed to think?

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