Alain de Botton Quotes, Good Life Quotes, Taken Quotes

It is this idea 'decency' should be attached to wealth -and 'indecency'' to poverty - that forms the core of one strand of skeptical complaint against the modern status-ideal. Why should failure to make money be taken as a sign of an unconditionally flawed human being rather than of a fiasco in one particular area if the far larger, more multifaceted, project of leading a good life? Why should both wealth and poverty be read as the predominant guides to an individual's morals ?

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Good Life Quotes , Taken 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

Bad architecture is in the end as much a failure of psychology as of design. It is an example expressed through materials of the same tendencies which in other domains will lead us to marry the wrong people, choose inappropriate jobs and book unsuccessful holidays: the tendency not to understand who we are and what will satisfy us.

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

Man seems merely dust postponed: the sublime as an encounter - pleasurable, intoxicating, even - with human weakness in the face of strength, age and size of the universe.

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

Forcing people to eat together is an effective way to promote tolerance.

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

If we are inclined to forget how much there is in the world besides that which we anticipate, then works of art are perhaps a little to blame, for in them we find at work the same process of simplification or selection as in the imagination.

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

I went to church and couldn't swallow it. The music was nice but I don't belong there.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Nice Quotes

It is perhaps sad books that best console us when we are sad.

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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

It is not just nature that defies us. Human life is as overwhelming... If we spend time in it [the vast spaces of nature], they may help us to accept more graciously the great, unfathomable events that molest our lives and will inevitably return us to dust.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Life Quotes , Dust Quotes

I think people want to get married to end their emotional uncertainty. In a way, they want to end powerful feelings, or certainly the negative ones.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Powerful Quotes , Emotional 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

Maturity: the confidence to have no opinions on many things.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Inspiring Quotes , Maturity Quotes

In the oasis complex, the thirsty man images he sees water, palm trees, and shade not because he has evidence for the belief, but because he has a need for it. Desperate needs bring about a hallucination of their solution: thirst hallucinates water, the need for love hallucinates a prince or princess. The oasis complex is never a complete delusion: the man in the desert does see something on the horizon. It is just that the palms have withered, the well is dry, and the place is infected with locusts.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Love Quotes , Princess Quotes

One rarely falls in love without being as much attracted to what is interestingly wrong with someone as what is objectively healthy.

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What am I supposed to do here? What am I supposed to think?

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes

The more closely we analyze what we consider 'sexy,' the more clearly we will understand that eroticism is the feeling of excitement we experience at finding another human being who shares our values and our sense of the meaning of existence.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Sexy Quotes , Feelings 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

The mind may be reluctant to think properly when thinking is all it is supposed to do; the task can be as paralysing as having to tell a joke or mimic an accent on demand.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Thinking Quotes , Mind Quotes

I am in general a very pessimistic person with an optimistic, day to day take on things. The bare facts of life are utterly terrifying. And yet, one can laugh. Indeed, one has to laugh precisely because of the darkness: the nervous laughter of the trenches.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Laughter Quotes , Optimistic Quotes