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  • Alain de Botton Quotes   372
  • Her lie was symptomatic of a certain pride she took in mocking the romantic, in being unsentimental, matter-of-fact, stoic; yet at heart she was the oppo site: idealistic, dreamy, giving, and deeply attached to everything she liked verbally to dismiss as "mushy.
  • 6 years ago



    Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Lying Quotes , Heart Quotes
  • We feel something, and reach out for the nearest phrase or hum with which to communicate, but which fails to do justice to what has induced us to do so....We stay on the outside of our impressions, as if staring at them through a frosted window, superficially related to them, yet estranged from whatever has eluded casual definition.
  • 6 years ago



    Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Justice Quotes , Phrases 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.
  • 6 years ago



    Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Country Quotes , May Quotes
  • In reality, the likelihood of reaching the pinnacle of capitalist society today is only marginally better than were the chances of being accepted into the French nobility four centuries ago, though at least an aristocratic age was franker, and therefore kinder, about the odds. It did not relentlessly play up the possibilities open to all, and so, in turn, did not cruelly equate an ordinary life with a failed one.
  • 6 years ago



    Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Reality Quotes , Odds Quotes
  • It is this idea 'decency' should be attached to wealth -and 'indecency'' to poverty - that forms the core of one strand of skeptical complaint against the modern status-ideal. Why should failure to make money be taken as a sign of an unconditionally flawed human being rather than of a fiasco in one particular area if the far larger, more multifaceted, project of leading a good life? Why should both wealth and poverty be read as the predominant guides to an individual's morals ?
  • 6 years ago



    Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Good Life Quotes , Taken 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.
  • 6 years ago



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