Alain de Botton Quotes, Gratitude Quotes, Punishment Quotes

Paying tax should be framed as a glorious civic duty worthy of gratitude - not a punishment for making money.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Gratitude Quotes , Punishment Quotes

Memory is... similar to anticipation: an instrument of simplification and selection.

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as the determinants of high status keep shifting, so, too, naturally, will the triggers of status anxiety be altered.

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

The most unbearable thing about many successful people is not - as we flatteringly think - how lazy they are, but how hard they work.

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

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.

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

Arguments are like eels: however logical, they may slip from the minds weak grasp unless fixed there by imagery and style.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Eels Quotes , Style Quotes

Though debts are condemned in the financial world, the world of friendship and love may perversely depend on well-managed debts.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Love And Friendship Quotes , And Love Quotes

As victims of hurt, we frequently don't bring up what ails us, because so many wounds look absurd in the light of day.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Hurt Quotes , Light Quotes

The more familiar two people become, the more the language they speak together departs from that of the ordinary, dictionary-defined discourse. Familiarity creates a new language, an in-house language of intimacy that carries reference to the story the two lovers are weaving together and that cannot be readily understood by others.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Love Quotes , Two Quotes

We will cease to be angry once we cease to be so hopeful.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Hopeful Quotes , Angry Quotes

Philosophy had supplied Socrates with convictions in which he had been able to have rational, as opposed to hysterical, confidence when faced with disapproval.

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

In the works of Lucretius, we find two reasons why we shouldn't worry about death. If you have had a successful life, Lucretius tell us, there's no reason to mind its end. And, if you haven't had a good time, "Why do you seek to add more years, which would also pass but ill?"

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

.. if you asked most people whether they believed in love or not, they’d probably say they didn’t. Yet that’s not necessarily what they truly think. It’s just the way they defend themselves against what they want. They believe in it, but pretend they don’t until they’re allowed to. Most people would throw away all their cynicism if they could. The majority just never gets the chance.

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

I'm also interested in the modern suggestion that you can have a combination of love and sex in a marriage - which no previous society has ever believed.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Sex Quotes , Suggestions Quotes

All tours are filled with humiliation. My publisher once hired a private jet to fly me to a venue where 1,000 people were waiting. It almost bankrupted him.

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

Everyone returns us to a different sense of ourselves, for we become a little of who they think we are.

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

Curiosity takes ignorance seriously - and is confident enough to admit when it's in the dark. It is aware of not knowing. And then it sets out to do something about it.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Ignorance Quotes , Dark Quotes

Let's say you went to Harvard or Oxford or Cambridge, and you said, 'I've come here because I'm in search of morality, guidance and consolation; I want to know how to live,' - they would show you the way to the insane asylum.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Motivation Quotes , Inspiration Quotes

Literature deeply stands opposed to the dominant value system-the one that rewards money and power. Writers are on the other side-they make us sympathetic to ideas and feelings that are of deep importance but can’t afford airtime in a commercialized, status-consciou s, and cynical world.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Ideas Quotes , Cynical 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.

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