Alain de Botton Quotes, Motivation Quotes, Inspiration 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.

6 years ago

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

There's a whole category of people who miss out by not allowing themselves to be weird enough.

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

The media insists on taking what someone didn't mean to say as being far closer to the truth than what they did.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Mean Quotes

Not everyone is worth listening to.

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After 40 (old age for most of man's history), one should strive to be more or less packed and ready to go were the end call to come.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Men Quotes , Age 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

In a secularising world, art has replaced religion as a touchstone of our reverence and devotion.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Art Quotes , World Quotes

When work is not going well, it's useful to remember that our identities stretch beyond what is on the business card, that we were people long before we became workers - and will continue to be human once we have put our tools down forever.

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

Perhaps because the origins of a certain kind of love lie in an impulse to escape ourselves and out weaknesses by an alliance with the beautiful and noble. But if the loved ones love us back, we are forced to return to ourselves, and are hence reminded of the things that had driven us into love in the first place. Perhaps it was not love we wanted after all, perhaps it was simply someone in whom to believe, but how can we continue to believe the the beloved now that they believe in us?

6 years ago

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

It seems the only way to write a half decent book is to worry oneself sick on an hourly basis that one is producing a complete disaster.

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

One wants never to give up this crystalline perspective. One wants to keep counterpositioning home with what one knows of alternative realities, as they exist in Tunis or Hyderabad. One wants never to forget that nothing here is normal, that the streets are different in Wisebaden, and Louyang, that this is just one of many possible worlds.

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

In their different ways, art and philosophy help us, in Schopenhauer's words, to turn pain into knowledge.

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

Our minds are susceptible to the influence of external voices telling us what we require to be satisfied, voices that may drown out the faint sounds emitted by our souls and distract us from the careful, arduous task of accurately naming our priorities.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Voice Quotes , Priorities 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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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Travel Quotes , Information Quotes

Being incomprehensible offers unparalleled protection against having nothing to say...but writing with simplicity requires courage, for there is a danger that one will be overlooked, dismissed as simpleminded by those with a tenacious belief that the impassable prose is a hallmark of intelligence.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Writing Quotes , Simplicity Quotes

Our sadness won’t be of the searing kind but more like a blend of joy and melancholy: joy at the perfection we see before us, melancholy at an awareness of how seldom we are sufficiently blessed to encounter anything of its kind. The flawless object throws into perspective the mediocrity that surrounds it. We are reminded of the way we would wish things always to be and of how incomplete our lives remain.

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

We envy only those whom we feel ourselves to be like; we envy only members of our reference group. There are few successes more unendurable than those of our close friends.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Envy Quotes , Groups Quotes

Intuition is unconscious accumulated experience informing judgement in real time.

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

One of the best protections against disappointment is to have a lot going on.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Disappointment Quotes

Our jobs make relentless calls on a narrow band of our faculties, reducing our chances of achieving rounded personalities and leaving us to suspect (often in the gathering darkness of a Sunday evening) that much of who we are, or could be, has gone unexplored.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Jobs Quotes , Sunday Quotes