Alain de Botton Quotes, Motivation Quotes, Believe Quotes

The problem is if you really believe in a society where those who merit to get to the top, get to the top, you’ll also, by implication … believe in a society where those who deserve to get to the bottom also get to the bottom and stay there.

6 years ago

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

Life gives us no such handy markers - a storm comes, and far from this being a harbinger of death and collapse, during its course a person discovers love and truth, beauty and happiness, the rain lashing at the windows all the while.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Rain Quotes , Giving Quotes

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

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Book Quotes , Sadness 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.

6 years ago

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

Our responses to the world are crucially moulded by the company we keep, for we temper our curiosity to fit in with the expectations of others.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Friendship Quotes , Travel Quotes

Maturity: knowing where you're crazy, trying to warn others of the fact and striving to keep yourself under control.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Crazy Quotes , Maturity 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.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Art Quotes , Imagination 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

Writing a book has about it some of the anxiety of telling a joke and having to wait several years to know whether or not it was funny.

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

Never too late to learn some embarrassingly basic, stupidly obvious things about oneself.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Inspirational Quotes , Obvious Things 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?

6 years ago

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

A world where a majority had imbibed the lessons implicit within tragic art would be one in which the consequences of our failures would necessarily cease to weigh upon us so heavily.

6 years ago

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

Because the rhythm of conversation makes no allowance for dead periods, because the presence of others calls for continuous responses, we are left to regret the inanity of what we say, and the missed opportunity of what we do not.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Regret Quotes , Opportunity 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.

6 years ago

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

6 years ago

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

6 years ago

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

Memory is... similar to anticipation: an instrument of simplification and selection.

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

We should not be frightened by appearances.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Appearance Quotes , Should Quotes

Once I began to consider everything as being of potential interest, objects released latent layers of value.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Layers Quotes , Interest Quotes

Despite its maddeningly vague, inarticulate form, anxiety is almost always trying to tell you something useful and apposite.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Always Trying Quotes , Anxiety Quotes