Alain de Botton Quotes, Vision Quotes, Use Quotes

What is a snob? A snob is anybody who takes a small part of you and uses that to come to a complete vision of who you are. That is snobbery.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Vision Quotes , Use Quotes

Most anger stems from feelings of weakness, sadness and fear: hard to remember when one is at the receiving end of its defiant roar.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Sadness Quotes , Feelings 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 was no longer her absence that wounded me, but my growing indifference to it. Forgetting, however calming, was also a reminder of infidelity to what I had at one time held so dear.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Infidelity Quotes , Growing 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

Out of the millions of people we live among, most of whom we habitually ignore and are ignored by in turn, there are always a few that hold hostage our capacity for happiness, whom we could recognize by their smell alone and whom we would rather die than be without.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Smell Quotes , People 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

Rage is caused by a conviction, almost comic in its optimistic origins (however tragic in its effects), that a given frustration has not been written into the contract of life.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Optimistic Quotes , Frustration 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 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

In Britain, because I live here, I can also run into problems of envy and competition. But all this is just in a day's work for a writer. You can't put stuff out there without someone calling you a complete fool. Oh, well.

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

The architects who benefit us most maybe those generous enough to lay aside their claims to genius in order to devote themselves to assembling graceful but predominantly unoriginal boxes. Architecture should have the confidence and the kindness to be a little boring.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Kindness Quotes , Order 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

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

Our bodies hold our minds hostage to their whims and rhythms.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Mind Quotes , Body 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

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

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

Unnatural to expect that learning to be happy should be any easier than, say, learning to play the violin or require any less practice.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Practice Quotes , Play 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

Booksellers are the most valuable destination for the lonely, given the numbers of books that were written because authors couldn't find anyone to talk to.

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