Alain de Botton Quotes, Eye Quotes, Our World Quotes

It should not be Illiers-Combray that we visit: a genuine homage to Proust would be to look at our world through his eyes, not look at his world through our eyes.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Eye Quotes , Our World 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.

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

It would be foolish to describe the logistics hub as merely ugly, for it has the horrifying, soulless, immaculate beauty characteristic of many of the workplaces of the modern world.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Would Be Quotes , World Quotes

It would scarcely be acceptable, for example, to ask in the course of an ordinary conversation what our society holds to be the purpose of work.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Ordinary Quotes , Example Quotes

Good sex isn't just fun, it keeps us sane and happy. Having sex with someone makes us feel wanted, alive and potent.

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

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

If cynicism and love lie at opposite ends of a spectrum, do we not sometimes fall in love in order to escape the debilitating cynicism to which we are prone? Is there not in every coup de foudre a certain willful exaggeration of the qualities of the beloved, an exaggeration which distracts us from our habitual pessimism and focuses our energies on someone in whom we can believe in a way we have never believed in ourselves?

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Falling In Love Quotes , Lying 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

The only way to be happy is to realise how much depends on how you look at things

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

One of love's greatest drawbacks is that, for a while at least, it is in danger of making us happy.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Danger 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

Perhaps the easiest people to fall in love with are those about whom we know nothing. Romances are never as pure as those we imagine during long train journeys, as we secretly contemplate a beautiful person who is gazing out of the window – a perfect love story interrupted only when the beloved looks back into the carriage and starts up a dull conversation about the excessive price of the on-board sandwiches with a neighbour or blows her nose aggressively into a handkerchief.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Beautiful Quotes , Falling In Love Quotes

There is no such thing as work-life balance. Everything worth fighting for unbalances your life.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Fighting Quotes , Balance Quotes

In the gap between who we wish one day to be and who we are at present, must come pain, anxiety, envy and humiliation.

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

These inventors were elevating the formulation of entrepreneurial ideas to the status of a visionary activity. Though forced to justify their efforts in the pragmatic language of venture capital, they were at heart utopian thinkers intent on transforming the world.

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

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

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Believe Quotes , God Love Quotes

The inability to live in the present lies in the fear of leaving the sheltered position of anticipation or memory, and so of admitting that this is the only life that one is ever likely (heavenly intervention aside) to live.

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

Responsible for wrapping the iron fist of authority in its velvet glove is Jane Axtell, head of the accountancy firm's Human Resources department.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Iron Quotes , Velvet Quotes

Perhaps it is true that we do not really exist until there is someone there to see us existing, we cannot properly speak until there is someone who can understand what we are saying in essence, we are not wholly alive until we are loved.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Essence Quotes , Alive Quotes

If it is true that love is the pursuit in another of qualities we lack in ourselves, then in our love of someone from another culture, one ambition may be to weld ourselves more closely to values missing from our own culture.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Ambition Quotes , Love Is Quotes