Alain de Botton Quotes, Kids Quotes, Thinking Quotes

We accept the need to train extensively to fly a plane; but think instinct should be enough for marrying and raising kids.

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

Many moments in religion seem attractive to me even though I can't believe in any of it.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Believe Quotes , Moments 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

Paying tax should be framed as a glorious civic duty worthy of gratitude - not a punishment for making money.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Gratitude Quotes , Punishment Quotes

We should read other people's books in order to learn what we feel; it is our own thoughts we should be developing, even if it is another writer's thought that help us to do so.

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

I know a lot about writing, but I don't know much about how other industries work. I've tried to use my naivety to my advantage.

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

Getting to the top has an unfortunate tendency to persuade people that the system is OK after all.

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

The arrogance that says analysing the relationship between reasons and causes is more important than writing a philosophy of shyness or sadness or friendship drives me nuts. I can't accept that.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Philosophy Quotes , Writing 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

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

The activities of drawing, eating and drinking, all involve assimilations by the self of desirable elements from the world, a transfer of goodness from without to within.

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

A successful work will draw out the features capable of exciting a sense of beauty and interest in the spectator.

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The secular world is full of holes. We have secularized badly.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , God Quotes , Soul Quotes

The greatest difficulty of Travel is that one is forced to take oneself along.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Difficulty Quotes

When I see someone like Richard Dawkins, I see my father. I grew up with that. I'm basically the child of Richard Dawkins.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Children Quotes , Father Quotes

Happiness may be difficult to obtain. The obstacles are not primarily financial.

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At the heart of every frustration lies a basic structure: the collision of a wish with an unyielding reality.

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

We need a home in the psychological sense as much as we need one in the physical: to compensate for a vulnerability. We need a refuge to shore up our states of mind, because so much of the world is opposed to our allegiances. We need our rooms to align us to desirable versions of ourselves and to keep alive the important, evanescent sides of us.

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

Much of the really serious trouble in the world gets going with a sense of humiliation.

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

I thought about societies where exceptional fortunes are built up in industries with very little connection to out sincere and significant needs, industries where it is difficult to escape from the disparity between a seriousness of means and a triviality of ends.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Mean Quotes , Connections Quotes