Alain de Botton Quotes, Jobs Quotes, Perfect Quotes

I learnt to stop fantasising about the perfect job or the perfect relationship because that can actually be an excuse for not living.

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That said, deciding to avoid other people does not necessarily equate with having no desire whatsoever for company; it may simply reflect a dissatisfaction with what—or who—is available. Cynics are, in the end, only idealists with awkwardly high standards. In Chamfort's words, 'It is sometimes said of a man who lives alone that he does not like society. This is like saying of a man that he does not like going for walks because he is not fond of walking at night in the forêt de Bondy.

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

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People only get really interesting when they start to rattle the bars of their cages.

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You normally have to be bashed about a bit by life to see the point of daffodils, sunsets and uneventful nice days.

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Bad art might be defined as a series of bad choices about what to show and what to leave out.

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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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I know a lot about writing, but I don't know much about how other industries work. I've tried to use my naivety to my advantage.

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

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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

To cut out every negative root would simultaneously mean choking off positive elements that might arise from it further up the stem of the plant. We should not feel embarrassed by our difficulties, only by our failure to grow anything beautiful from them.

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Never too late to learn some embarrassingly basic, stupidly obvious things about oneself.

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It is no coincidence that the Western attraction to sublime landscapes developed at precisely the moment when traditional beliefs in God began to wane.

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Being funny should be an incidental byproduct of trying to get to something truthful, not a destination in itself.

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Our responses to the world are crucially moulded by the company we keep, for we temper our curiosity to fit in with the expectations of others.

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I am in general a very pessimistic person with an optimistic, day to day take on things. The bare facts of life are utterly terrifying. And yet, one can laugh. Indeed, one has to laugh precisely because of the darkness: the nervous laughter of the trenches.

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The problem is if you really believe in a society where those who merit to get to the top, get to the top, you’ll also, by implication … believe in a society where those who deserve to get to the bottom also get to the bottom and stay there.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Motivation Quotes , Believe 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.

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A danger of travel is that we see things at the wrong time, before we have had a chance to build up the necessary receptivity and when new information is therefore as useless and fugitive as necklace beads without a connecting chain.

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