Alain de Botton Quotes, Beautiful Quotes, Appreciation Quotes

It is in dialogue with pain that many beautiful things acquire their value. Acquaintance with grief turns out to be one of the more unusual prerequisites of architectural appreciation. We might, quite aside from all other requirements, need to be a little sad before buildings can properly touch us.

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A successful work will draw out the features capable of exciting a sense of beauty and interest in the spectator.

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Politics is so difficult, it's generally only people who aren't quite up to the task who feel convinced they are.

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

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It's as though either you accept [religious] doctrine and then you can have all the nice stuff, or you reject the doctrine and you're living in some kind of spiritual wasteland under the guidance of CNN and Walmart.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , God Quotes , Spiritual Quotes

Being content is perhaps no less easy than playing the violin well: and requires no less practice.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Practice Quotes , Contentment 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

Every adult life could be said to be defined by two great love stories: the story of our quest for sexual love and the story of our quest for love from the world.

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There's a whole category of people who miss out by not allowing themselves to be weird enough.

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

what we call a home is merely any place that succeeds in making more consistenly available to us the important truths which the wider world ignores, or which our distracted and irresolute selves have trouble holding onto." (p123) Architecture of Happiness

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Home Quotes , Self Quotes

Rather than teasing the buyers, we may blame the society in which they lived for setting up a situation where the purchase of ornate cabinets felt psychologically necessary and rewarding, where respect was dependent on baroque displays. Rather than a tale of greed, the history of luxury could more accurately be read as a record of emotional trauma. It is the legacy of those who have felt pressured by the disdain of others to add an extraordinary amount to their bare selves in order to signal that they too may lay a claim to love.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Emotional Quotes , Luxury 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.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Running Quotes , Animal Quotes

What is fascinating about marriage is why anyone wants to get married.

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Work is most fulfilling when you're at the comfortable, exciting edge of not quite knowing what you are doing.

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One rarely falls in love without being as much attracted to what is interestingly wrong with someone as what is objectively healthy.

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One of love's greatest drawbacks is that, for a while at least, it is in danger of making us happy.

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The challenge of modern relationships: how to prove more interesting than the other's smartphone.

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What we find exotic abroad may be what we hunger for in vain at home.

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It is striking how much more seriously we are likely to be taken after we have been dead a few centuries.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Taken Quotes , Century Quotes

In the oasis complex, the thirsty man images he sees water, palm trees, and shade not because he has evidence for the belief, but because he has a need for it. Desperate needs bring about a hallucination of their solution: thirst hallucinates water, the need for love hallucinates a prince or princess. The oasis complex is never a complete delusion: the man in the desert does see something on the horizon. It is just that the palms have withered, the well is dry, and the place is infected with locusts.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Love Quotes , Princess Quotes