Alain de Botton Quotes, Always Trying Quotes, Anxiety Quotes

Despite its maddeningly vague, inarticulate form, anxiety is almost always trying to tell you something useful and apposite.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Always Trying Quotes , Anxiety Quotes

To be shown love is to feel ourselves the object of concern: our presence is noted, our name is registered, our views are listened to, our failings are treated with indulgence and our needs are ministered to. And under such care, we flourish.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Love Is Quotes , Views Quotes

As we write, so we build: to keep a record of what matters to us.

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The finest proof of our loyalty toward one another was our monstrous disloyalties towards everyone else.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Loyalty Quotes , Finest Quotes

One wants never to give up this crystalline perspective. One wants to keep counterpositioning home with what one knows of alternative realities, as they exist in Tunis or Hyderabad. One wants never to forget that nothing here is normal, that the streets are different in Wisebaden, and Louyang, that this is just one of many possible worlds.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Giving Up Quotes , Home Quotes

Kant and Hegel are interesting thinkers. But I am happy to insist that they are also terrible writers.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Interesting Quotes , Hegel 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

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

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

Taking photographs can assuage the itch for possession sparked by the beauty of a place; our anxiety over losing a precious scene can decline with every click of the shutter.

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

We need a home in the psychological sense as much as we need one in the physical: to compensate for a vulnerability. We need a refuge to shore up our states of mind, because so much of the world is opposed to our allegiances. We need our rooms to align us to desirable versions of ourselves and to keep alive the important, evanescent sides of us.

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

Dreams reveal we never quite get 'over' anything: it's all still in there somewhere.

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There is a devilishly direct relationship between the significance of an idea and how nervous we become at the prospect of having to think about it.

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

It is perhaps sad books that best console us when we are sad, and to lonely service stations that we should drive when there is no one for us to hold or love.

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

When I see someone like Richard Dawkins, I see my father. I grew up with that. I'm basically the child of Richard Dawkins.

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

Maturity: the confidence to have no opinions on many things.

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

The attentions of others matter to us because we are afflicted by a congenital uncertainty as to our own value, as a result of which affliction we tend to allow others' appraisals to play a determining role in how we see ourselves. Our sense of identity is held captive by the judgements of those we live among.

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

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

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

To look at the paper is to raise a seashell to one's ear and to be overwhelmed by the roar of humanity.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Humanity Quotes , Looks Quotes

A dominant impulse on encountering beauty is to wish to hold on to it, to possess it and give it weight in one’s life. There is an urge to say, ‘I was here, I saw this and it mattered to me.

6 years ago

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