Alain de Botton Quotes, Moving Quotes, Eye Quotes

Journeys are the midwives of thought. Few places are more conducive to internal conversations than a moving plane, ship or train. There is an almost quaint correlation between what is in front of our eyes and the thoughts we are able to have in our heads: large thoughts at times requiring large views, new thoughts new places. Introspective reflections which are liable to stall are helped along by the flow of the landscape. The mind may be reluctant to think properly when thinking is all it is supposed to do.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Moving Quotes , Eye Quotes

What we seek, at the deepest level, is inwardly to resemble, rather than physically to possess, the objects and places that touch us through their beauty.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Levels Quotes

Reputation matters so much only because people so seldom think for themselves.

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

Feeling lost, crazy and desperate belongs to a good life as much as optimism, certainty and reason.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Good Life Quotes , Crazy Quotes

Without sex, we would be dangerously invulnerable. We might believe we were not ridiculous. We wouldn't know rejection and humiliation so intimately.

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

I thought about societies where exceptional fortunes are built up in industries with very little connection to out sincere and significant needs, industries where it is difficult to escape from the disparity between a seriousness of means and a triviality of ends.

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

Our greatest furies spring from events which violate our sense of the ground of our existence.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Spring Quotes , Events Quotes

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.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Friendship Quotes , Travel Quotes

It was no longer her absence that wounded me, but my growing indifference to it. Forgetting, however calming, was also a reminder of infidelity to what I had at one time held so dear.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Infidelity Quotes , Growing Quotes

To be shown love is to feel ourselves the object of concern: our presence is noted, our name is registered, our views are listened to, our failings are treated with indulgence and our needs are ministered to. And under such care, we flourish.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Love Is Quotes , Views Quotes

Anyone who isn't embarrassed of who they were last year probably isn't learning enough.

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

Must being in love always mean being in pain?

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

To cut out every negative root would simultaneously mean choking off positive elements that might arise from it further up the stem of the plant. We should not feel embarrassed by our difficulties, only by our failure to grow anything beautiful from them.

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

Rather than getting more spoilt with age, as difficulties pile up, epiphanies of gratitude abound.

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

The problem is if you really believe in a society where those who merit to get to the top, get to the top, you’ll also, by implication … believe in a society where those who deserve to get to the bottom also get to the bottom and stay there.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Motivation Quotes , Believe Quotes

We should keep a careful diary of our moments of envy: they are our covert guides to what we should try to do next.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Envy Quotes , Trying Quotes

On paper, being good sounds great but a lot depends on the atmosphere of the workplace or community we live in. We tend to become good or bad depending on the cues sent out within a particular space.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Space Quotes , Community Quotes

Life seems to be a process of replacing one anxiety with another and substituting one desire for another--which is not to say that we should never strive to overcome any of our anxieties or fulfil any of our desires, but rather to suggest that we should perhaps build into our strivings an awareness of the way our goals promise us a respite and a resolution that they cannot, by definition, deliver.

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

The price we have paid for expecting to be so much more than our ancestors is a perpetual anxiety that we are far from being all we might be.

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

Most of us stand poised at the edge of brilliance, haunted by the knowledge of our proximity, yet still demonstrably on the wrong side of the line, our dealings with reality undermined by a range of minor yet critical psychological flaws (a little too much optimism, an unprocessed rebelliousness, a fatal impatience or sentimentality). We are like an exquisite high-speed aircraft which for lack of a tiny part is left stranded beside the runway, rendered slower than a tractor or bicycle.

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