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  • Alain de Botton Quotes   372
  • We tend to believe in the modern secular world that if you tell someone something once, they'll remember it. ... Religions go, "Nonsense. You need to keep repeating the lesson 10 times a day. So get on your knees and repeat it." That's what all religions tell us: "Get on your knees and repeat it 10 or 20 or 15 times a day." Otherwise our minds are like sieves.
  • 6 years ago



    Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Believe Quotes , Mind Quotes
  • Status Anxiety: A worry, so pernicious as to be capable of ruining extended stretches of our lives, that we are in danger of failing to conform to the ideals of success laid down by our society and that we may as a result be stripped of dignity and respect; a worry that we are currently occupying too modest a rung or are about to fall to a lower one.
  • 6 years ago



    Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Happiness Quotes , Success 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.
  • 6 years ago



    Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Writing Quotes , Simplicity Quotes
  • We don't exist unless there is someone who can see us existing, what we say has no meaning until someone can understand, while to be surrounded by friends is constantly to have our identity confirmed; their knowledge and care for us have the power to pull us from our numbness. In small comments, many of them teasing, they reveal they know our foibles and except them and so, in turn, accept that we have a place in the world.
  • 6 years ago



    Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Numbness Quotes , Identity Quotes
  • We need a home in the psychological sense as much as we need one in the physical: to compensate for a vulnerability. We need a refuge to shore up our states of mind, because so much of the world is opposed to our allegiances. We need our rooms to align us to desirable versions of ourselves and to keep alive the important, evanescent sides of us.
  • 6 years ago



    Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Home Quotes , Mind Quotes
  • Objectively good spaces to work rarely end up being so; in their faultlessness, quiet and well-equipped studios have a habit of rendering the fear of failure overwhelming. Original thoughts are like shy animals. We sometimes have to look the other way - towards a busy street or terminal - before they run out of their burrows.
  • 6 years ago



    Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Running Quotes , Animal 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.
  • 6 years ago



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