Alain de Botton Quotes, Interesting Quotes, Hegel Quotes

Kant and Hegel are interesting thinkers. But I am happy to insist that they are also terrible writers.

5 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Interesting Quotes , Hegel Quotes

The arrogance that says analysing the relationship between reasons and causes is more important than writing a philosophy of shyness or sadness or friendship drives me nuts. I can't accept that.

5 years ago

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

It looks like it’s wasting time, but literature is actually the ultimate time-saver - because it gives us access to a range of emotions and events that it would take you years, decades, millennia to try to experience directly. Literature is the greatest reality simulator - a machine that puts you through infinitely more situations than you can ever directly witness.

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

If we are inclined to forget how much there is in the world besides that which we anticipate, then works of art are perhaps a little to blame, for in them we find at work the same process of simplification or selection as in the imagination.

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

The longing for a destiny is no nowhere stronger than in our romantic life. All too often forced to share our bed with those who cannot fathom our soul, can we not be forgiven if we believe ourselves fated to stumble one day upon the man or woman of our dreams.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Dream Quotes , Believe 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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Intimacy is the capacity to be rather weird with someone - and finding that that's ok with them.

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Let death find us as we are building up our matchstick protests against its waves.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Building Up Quotes , Wave Quotes

Intuition is unconscious accumulated experience informing judgement in real time.

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

We should not be frightened by appearances.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Appearance Quotes , Should Quotes

The moment we cry in a film is not when things are sad but when they turn out to be more beautiful than we expected them to be.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Beautiful Quotes , Cry 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

I'm also interested in the modern suggestion that you can have a combination of love and sex in a marriage - which no previous society has ever believed.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Sex Quotes , Suggestions Quotes

Envy: a confused, tangled guide to one's own ambitions.

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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

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

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The problem isn't so much finding good ideas (there is no shortage) as embedding the ones we have into everyday practice.

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

Travel agents would be wiser to ask us what we hope to change about our lives rather than simply where we wish to go.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Wish Quotes , Agents Quotes

It is perhaps when our lives are at their most problematic that we are likely to be most receptive to beautiful things.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Beautiful Quotes , Beautiful Things Quotes

Sublime places repeat in grand terms a lesson that ordinary life typically teaches viciously: that the universe is mightier than we are, that we are frail and temporary and have no alternative but to accept limitations on our will; that we must bow to necessities greater than ourselves.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Sublime Quotes , Bows Quotes