Alain de Botton Quotes, Disappointment Quotes

One of the best protections against disappointment is to have a lot going on.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Disappointment Quotes

The origins and travels of our purchases remain matters of indifference, although to the more imaginative at least a slight dampness at the bottom of a carton, or an obscure code printed along a computer cable, may hint at processes of manufacture and transport nobler and more mysterious, more worthy of wonder and study, than the very goods themselves.

6 years ago

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

Why, then, if expensive things cannot bring us remarkable joy, are we so powerfully drawn to them?

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Joy Quotes , Remarkable Quotes

Sweetness is the opposite of machismo, which is everywhere-and I really don't get on with machismo. I'm interested in sensitivity, and weakness, and fear, and anxiety, because I think that, at the end of the day, behind our masks, that's what we are.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Thinking Quotes , Opposites 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.

6 years ago

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

Most anger stems from feelings of weakness, sadness and fear: hard to remember when one is at the receiving end of its defiant roar.

6 years ago

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

Maturity: knowing where you're crazy, trying to warn others of the fact and striving to keep yourself under control.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Crazy Quotes , Maturity Quotes

In their different ways, art and philosophy help us, in Schopenhauer's words, to turn pain into knowledge.

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

Taking architecture seriously therefore makes some singular and strenuous demands upon us...It means conceding that we are inconveniently vulnerable to the colour of our wallpaper and that our sense of purpose may be derailed by an unfortunate bedspread

6 years ago

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

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

6 years ago

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

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

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Philosophy Quotes , Book 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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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Pain Quotes , Envy 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.

6 years ago

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

Much of the really serious trouble in the world gets going with a sense of humiliation.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , World Quotes , Serious Quotes

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

6 years ago

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

We study biology, physics, movements of glaciers... Where are the classes on envy, feeling wronged, despair, bitterness.

6 years ago

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

Symons remarked that the most common and unhelpful illusion plaguing those who came to see him was the idea that they ought somehow, in the normal course of events, to have intuited long before they had finished their degrees, started families, bought houses and risen to the top of law firms - what they should properly be doing with their lives. They were tormented by a residual notion of having through some error or stupidity on their part missed out on their true calling.

6 years ago

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

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

6 years ago

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

We should not feel embarrassed by our difficulties, only by our failure to grow anything beautiful from them.

6 years ago

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

Cynics are - beneath it all - only idealists with awkwardly high standards.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , High Standards Quotes , Standards Quotes