Alain de Botton Quotes, Real Quotes, Weakness Quotes

Do you love me enough that I may be weak with you? Everyone loves strength, but do you love me for my weakness? That is the real test.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Real Quotes , Weakness 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

We are sad at home and blame the weather and the ugliness of the buildings, but on the tropical island we learn that the state of the skies and the appearance of our dwellings can never on their own underwrite our joy nor condemn us to misery.

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

A great writer picks up on those things that matter. It’s almost like their radar is attuned to the most significant moments.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Matter Quotes , Moments Quotes

You have to be quite heavily invested in someone to do them the honour of telling them you're annoyed with them.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Annoyed Quotes

Politics is so difficult, it's generally only people who aren't quite up to the task who feel convinced they are.

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

Status Anxiety: A worry, so pernicious as to be capable of ruining extended stretches of our lives, that we are in danger of failing to conform to the ideals of success laid down by our society and that we may as a result be stripped of dignity and respect; a worry that we are currently occupying too modest a rung or are about to fall to a lower one.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Happiness Quotes , Success Quotes

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

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

Unrequited love may be painful, but it is safely painful, because it does not involve inflicting damage on anyone but oneself, a private pain that is as bittersweet as it is self-induced. But as soon as love is reciprocated, one must be prepared to give up the passivity of simply being hurt and take on the responsibility of perpetrating hurt oneself.

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

What should worry us is not the number of people that oppose us, but how good their reasons are for doing so.

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

It's very hard to respect people on holiday - everybody looks so silly at the beach, it makes you hate humanity - but when you see people at their work they elicit respect, whether it's a mechanic, a stonemason or an accountant.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Beach Quotes , Hate 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

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

Rather than employing it as a supplement to active, conscious seeing, they used the medium as a substitute, paying less attention to the world than they had done previously, taking it on faith that photography automatically assured them possession of it.

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

The difference between hope and despair is a different way of telling stories from the same facts.

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

A simple problem of arithmetic: there are far more ambitions than there are grand destinies available.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Ambition Quotes , Simple 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

The moment we cry in a film is not when things are sad but when they turn out to be more beautiful than we expected them to be.

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

Objectively good spaces to work rarely end up being so; in their faultlessness, quiet and well-equipped studios have a habit of rendering the fear of failure overwhelming. Original thoughts are like shy animals. We sometimes have to look the other way - towards a busy street or terminal - before they run out of their burrows.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Running Quotes , Animal Quotes

At the beginning of human history, as we struggled to light fires and to chisel fallen trees into rudimentary canoes, who could have predicted that long after we had managed to send men to the moon and areoplanes to Australasia, we would still have such trouble knowing how to tolerate ourselves, forgive our loved ones, and apologise for our tantrums?

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Moon Quotes , Men Quotes