Alain de Botton Quotes, Pain Quotes, Thinking Quotes

We don't really learn anything properly until there is a problem, until we are in pain, until something fails to go as we had hoped ... We suffer, therefore we think.

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

It is by finding out what something is not that one comes closest to understanding what it is.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Understanding Quotes , Findings Quotes

Symons remarked that the most common and unhelpful illusion plaguing those who came to see him was the idea that they ought somehow, in the normal course of events, to have intuited long before they had finished their degrees, started families, bought houses and risen to the top of law firms - what they should properly be doing with their lives. They were tormented by a residual notion of having through some error or stupidity on their part missed out on their true calling.

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

How generous was it to offer gifts to people one knew would never accept them?

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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

The telephone becomes an instrument of torture in the demonic hands of a beloved who doesn't call.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Hands Quotes , Telephones Quotes

Most victories are, in the best way, acts of revenge.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Revenge Quotes , Victory 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

Distress at losing an object can be as much a frustration at the intellectual mystery of the disappearance as about the loss itself.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Loss Quotes , Frustration Quotes

It is perhaps sad books that best console us when we are sad, and to lonely service stations that we should drive when there is no one for us to hold or love.

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

No one is able to produce a great work of art without experience, nor achieve a worldly position immediately, nor be a great lover at the first attempt; and in the interval between initial failure and subsequent success, in the gap between who we wish one day to be and who we are at present, must come pain, anxiety, envy and humiliation. We suffer because we cannot spontaneously master the ingredients of fulfillment.

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

We each appear to hold within ourselves a range of divergent views as to our native qualities.. And amid such uncertainty, we typically turn to the wider world to settle the question of our significance.. we seem beholden to affections of others to endure ourselves.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Views Quotes , Quality 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

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

Those who divorce aren't necessarily the most unhappy, just those neatly able to believe their misery is caused by one other person.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Believe Quotes , Divorce Quotes

Rather than teasing the buyers, we may blame the society in which they lived for setting up a situation where the purchase of ornate cabinets felt psychologically necessary and rewarding, where respect was dependent on baroque displays. Rather than a tale of greed, the history of luxury could more accurately be read as a record of emotional trauma. It is the legacy of those who have felt pressured by the disdain of others to add an extraordinary amount to their bare selves in order to signal that they too may lay a claim to love.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Emotional Quotes , Luxury Quotes

It's hard loving those who don't much like themselves: "If you're so great, why would you think I'm so great.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Thinking Quotes , Self Hatred Quotes

Work finally begins when the fear of doing nothing exceeds the fear of doing it badly.

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Travel agents would be wiser to ask us what we hope to change about our lives rather than simply where we wish to go.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Wish Quotes , Agents Quotes

He did not mean to depress us, rather to free us from expectations which inspire bitterness. It is consoling, when love has let us down, to hear that happiness was never part of the plan.

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