Alain de Botton Quotes, Book Quotes, Secret Quotes

The study of maps and the perusal of travel books aroused in me a secret fascination that was at times almost irresistible.

6 years ago

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

We are continuously challenged to discover new works of culture—and, in the process, we don’t allow any one of them to assume a weight in our minds.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Mind Quotes , New Work Quotes

By travelling across frontiers, on horseback and in the imagination, Montaigne invited us to to exchange local prejudices and the self division they induced for less constraining identities as citizens of the world.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Self Quotes , Imagination Quotes

The problem with clichés is not that they contain false ideas, but rather that they are superficial articulations of very good ones...If...we are obliged to create our own language, it is because there are dimensions to ourselves absent from clichés, which require us to flout etiquette in order to convey with greater accuracy the distinctive timbre of our thought.

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

Don't despair: despair suggests you are in total control and know what is coming. You don't - surrender to events with hope.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Despair Quotes , Events Quotes

The very act of drawing an object, however badly, swiftly takes the drawer from a woolly sense of what the object looks like to a precise awareness of its component parts and particularities.

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

It is not necessarily at home that we best encounter our true selves. The furniture insists that we cannot change because it does not; the domestic setting keeps us tethered to the person we are in ordinary life, who may not be who we essentially are.

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

The telephone becomes an instrument of torture in the demonic hands of a beloved who doesn't call.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Hands Quotes , Telephones Quotes

Only by declaring a book completely finished can one start to see how much remains to be done on it.

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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

Not everyone is worth listening to.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes

We need objects to remind us of the commitments we've made. That carpet from Morocco reminds us of the impulsive, freedom-loving side of ourselves we're in danger of losing touch with. Beautiful furniture gives us something to live up to. All designed objects are propaganda for a way of life.

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

Life gives us no such handy markers - a storm comes, and far from this being a harbinger of death and collapse, during its course a person discovers love and truth, beauty and happiness, the rain lashing at the windows all the while.

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

The largest part of what we call 'personality' is determined by how we've opted to defend ourselves against anxiety and sadness".

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Sadness Quotes , Worry Quotes

Never, ever become a writer. It's a nightmare.

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

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Cynics are - beneath it all - only idealists with awkwardly high standards.

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

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The mind does most of its best thinking when we aren't there. The answers are there in the morning.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Morning Quotes , Thinking 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