Alain de Botton Quotes, Happiness Quotes, Success 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.

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

There are selections so acute that they come to define a place, with the result that we can no longer travel through that landscape without being reminded of what a great artist noticed there.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Artist Quotes , Greatness Quotes

Being funny should be an incidental byproduct of trying to get to something truthful, not a destination in itself.

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

These inventors were elevating the formulation of entrepreneurial ideas to the status of a visionary activity. Though forced to justify their efforts in the pragmatic language of venture capital, they were at heart utopian thinkers intent on transforming the world.

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

The largest part of what we call 'personality' is determined by how we've opted to defend ourselves against anxiety and sadness".

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Sadness Quotes , Worry Quotes

...if the beginnings of love and amorous politics are equally rosy, then the ends may be equally bloody.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Love Quotes , May 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

It seems the only way to write a half decent book is to worry oneself sick on an hourly basis that one is producing a complete disaster.

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

To one's enemies: "I hate myself more than you ever could.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Hate Quotes , Enemy Quotes

Never too late to learn some embarrassingly basic, stupidly obvious things about oneself.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Inspirational Quotes , Obvious Things Quotes

Wealth is not an absolute. It is relative to desire. Every time we yearn for something we cannot afford, we grow poorer, whatever our resources. And every time we feel satisfied with what we have, we can be counted as rich, however little we may actually possess.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Desire Quotes , May Quotes

It is by finding out what something is not that one comes closest to understanding what it is.

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

The good parent: someone who doesn't mind, for a time, being hated by their children.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Children Quotes , Parent Quotes

One of the better guarantors of ending up in a good relationship: an advanced capacity to be alone.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Good Relationship 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

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

We should not be frightened by appearances.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Appearance Quotes , Should 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

The greatest difficulty of Travel is that one is forced to take oneself along.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Difficulty Quotes

William James once made an acute point about the relationship between happiness and expectation. He argued that satisfaction with ourselves does not require us to succeed in every endeavour. We are not always humiliated by failing; we are humiliated only if we first invest our pride and sense of worth in a given achievement and then do not reach it.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Pride Quotes , Expectations Quotes