Alain de Botton Quotes, Stranger Quotes, Conversation Quotes

It wasn't only fanatics and drunkards who began conversations with strangers in public.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Stranger Quotes , Conversation Quotes

The greatest works of art speak to us without knowing us.

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

It is no coincidence that the Western attraction to sublime landscapes developed at precisely the moment when traditional beliefs in God began to wane.

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

The problem with clichés is not that they contain false ideas, but rather that they are superficial articulations of very good ones...If...we are obliged to create our own language, it is because there are dimensions to ourselves absent from clichés, which require us to flout etiquette in order to convey with greater accuracy the distinctive timbre of our thought.

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

The mind may be reluctant to think properly when thinking is all it is supposed to do; the task can be as paralysing as having to tell a joke or mimic an accent on demand.

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

Those who divorce aren't necessarily the most unhappy, just those neatly able to believe their misery is caused by one other person.

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

There is real danger of a disconnect between what's on your business card and who you are deep inside, and it's not a disconnect that the world is ready to be patient with.

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

There is always the option of being emotionally lazy, that is, of quoting.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Lazy Quotes , Sloth 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

How do the stems connect to the roots?' 'Where is the mist coming from?' 'Why does one tree seem darker than another?' These questions are implicitly asked and answered in the process of sketching.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Roots Quotes , Tree Quotes

It would scarcely be acceptable, for example, to ask in the course of an ordinary conversation what our society holds to be the purpose of work.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Ordinary Quotes , Example Quotes

Unnatural to expect that learning to be happy should be any easier than, say, learning to play the violin or require any less practice.

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

One kind of good book should leave you asking: how did the author know that about me?

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Book Quotes , Asking 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

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

We don't really learn anything properly until there is a problem, until we are in pain, until something fails to go as we had hoped ... We suffer, therefore we think.

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

Happiness is impossible for longer than 15 minutes. We are the descendants of creatures who, above all else, worried.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Impossible Quotes , Worried Quotes

Our capacity to draw happiness from aesthetic objects or material goods in fact seems critically dependent on our first satisfying a more important range of emotional or psychological needs, among them the need for understanding, for love, expression and respect.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Happiness Quotes , Emotional Quotes

Every realistic picture represents a choice as to which features of reality should be given prominence; no painting ever captures the whole.

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

It's clear to me that there is no good reason for many philosophy books to sound as complicated as they do.

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