Alain de Botton Quotes, Taken Quotes, Century Quotes

It is striking how much more seriously we are likely to be taken after we have been dead a few centuries.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Taken Quotes , Century Quotes

An argument in a couple: 2 people attempting to introduce each other to important truths - by panicked shouting.

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

It's clear to me that there is no good reason for many philosophy books to sound as complicated as they do.

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

The finest proof of our loyalty toward one another was our monstrous disloyalties towards everyone else.

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Although I don't believe in God, Bach's music shows me what a love of God must feel like.

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

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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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Despite the best efforts of critics and the hopes of authors, our tastes in books are probably as inherent & unbudgeable as those in food.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Book Quotes , Best Effort Quotes

It's perhaps easier now than ever before to make a good living; it's perhaps harder than ever before to stay calm, to be free of career anxiety.

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

There are things that are not spoken about in polite society. Very quickly in most conversations you'll reach a moment where someone goes, 'Oh, that's a bit heavy,' or 'Eew, disgusting.' And literature is a place where that stuff goes; where people whisper to each other across books, the writer to the reader. I think that stops you feeling lonely – in the deeper sense, lonely.

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

A dominant impulse on encountering beauty is to wish to hold on to it, to possess it and give it weight in one’s life. There is an urge to say, ‘I was here, I saw this and it mattered to me.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Travel Quotes , Giving 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

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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We are all more intelligent than we are capable, and awareness of the insanity of love has never saved anyone from the disease.

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Writing a book has about it some of the anxiety of telling a joke and having to wait several years to know whether or not it was funny.

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On paper, being good sounds great but a lot depends on the atmosphere of the workplace or community we live in. We tend to become good or bad depending on the cues sent out within a particular space.

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Intuition is unconscious accumulated experience informing judgement in real time.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Real Quotes , Judgement Quotes

It looks like it’s wasting time, but literature is actually the ultimate time-saver - because it gives us access to a range of emotions and events that it would take you years, decades, millennia to try to experience directly. Literature is the greatest reality simulator - a machine that puts you through infinitely more situations than you can ever directly witness.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Reality Quotes , Years 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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I feel that the great challenge of our time is the communication of ideas.

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