Alain de Botton Quotes, Action Quotes, Tendencies Quotes

The best cure for one's bad tendencies is to see them in action in another person.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Action Quotes , Tendencies Quotes

We might have been ready to offer sympathy, but in actuality there were stronger reasons to want to congratulate her for having found such a powerful motive to feel sad. We should have envied her for having located someone without whom she so firmly felt she could not survive, beyond the gate let along in a bare student bedroom in a suburb of Rio. If she had been able to view her situation from a sufficient distance, she might have been able to recognise this as one of the high points in her life.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Powerful Quotes , Distance Quotes

We often lose our tempers not with those who are actually to blame; just with those who love us enough to forgive us our foul moods.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Forgiving Quotes , Blame Quotes

Philosophy, art, politics, religion and bohemia have never sought to do away entirely with the status hierarchy; they have attemptee, rather, to institute new kinds of hierarchies based on sets of values unrecognised by, and critical of, those of the majority.. They have provided us with persuasive and consoling reminders that there is more than one way of succeeding in life.

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

Not being understood may be taken as a sign that there is much in one to understand.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Wisdom Quotes , Taken 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

You need a long hard day's work to reveal the logic of the craving for very bad tv and alcohol.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Long Quotes , Alcohol Quotes

One's doing well if age improves even slightly one's capacity to hold on to that vital truism: "This too shall pass.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Age Quotes , Aging 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

A lump rises in our throat at the sight of beauty from an implicit knowledge that the happiness it hints at is the exception.

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

The true nature of bureaucracy may be nowhere more obvious to the observer than in a developing country, for only there will it still be made manifest by the full complement of documents, files, veneered desks and cabinets - which convey the strict and inverse relationship between productivity and paperwork.

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

Although I don't believe in God, Bach's music shows me what a love of God must feel like.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Believe Quotes , God Love Quotes

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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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Danger Quotes

The desire for high status is never stronger than in situations where "ordinary" life fails to answer a median need for dignity and comfort.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Desire Quotes , Stronger 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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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Beautiful Quotes , Appreciation Quotes

Happiness may be difficult to obtain. The obstacles are not primarily financial.

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

Rather than employing it as a supplement to active, conscious seeing, they used the medium as a substitute, paying less attention to the world than they had done previously, taking it on faith that photography automatically assured them possession of it.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Photography Quotes , Attention Quotes

Our jobs make relentless calls on a narrow band of our faculties, reducing our chances of achieving rounded personalities and leaving us to suspect (often in the gathering darkness of a Sunday evening) that much of who we are, or could be, has gone unexplored.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Jobs Quotes , Sunday Quotes

It is in books, poems, paintings which often give us the confidence to take seriously feelings in ourselves that we might otherwise never have thought to acknowledge.

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

Sublime places repeat in grand terms a lesson that ordinary life typically teaches viciously: that the universe is mightier than we are, that we are frail and temporary and have no alternative but to accept limitations on our will; that we must bow to necessities greater than ourselves.

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