Alain de Botton Quotes, Sports Quotes, Real Quotes

I was foreign and Jewish, with a funny name, and was very small and hated sport, a real problem at an English prep school. So the way to get round it was to become the school joker, which I did quite effectively - I was always fooling around to make the people who would otherwise dump me in the loo laugh.

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In a secularising world, art has replaced religion as a touchstone of our reverence and devotion.

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If the behaviour of babies and small children is any guide, we emerge into the world with our tendencies to imbalance already well entrenched. In our playpens and high chairs, we are rarely far from displaying either hysterical happiness or savage disappointment, love or rage, mania or exhaustion--and, despite the growth of a more temperate exterior in adulthood, we seldom succeed in laying claim to lasting equilibrium, traversing our lives like stubbornly listing ships on choppy seas.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Baby Quotes , Disappointment 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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The pleasure we derive from journeys is perhaps dependent more on the mindset with which we travel than on the destination we travel to.

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Most good thinking has its origin in fear.

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

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We should keep a careful diary of our moments of envy: they are our covert guides to what we should try to do next.

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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

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.

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You need a long hard day's work to reveal the logic of the craving for very bad tv and alcohol.

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It seems the only way to write a half decent book is to worry oneself sick on an hourly basis that one is producing a complete disaster.

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The longing for a destiny is no nowhere stronger than in our romantic life. All too often forced to share our bed with those who cannot fathom our soul, can we not be forgiven if we believe ourselves fated to stumble one day upon the man or woman of our dreams.

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

It is in dialogue with pain that many beautiful things acquire their value. Acquaintance with grief turns out to be one of the more unusual prerequisites of architectural appreciation. We might, quite aside from all other requirements, need to be a little sad before buildings can properly touch us.

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Curiosity might be pictured as being made up of chains of small questions extending outwards, sometimes over huge distances, from a central hub composed of a few blunt, large questions.

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I was uncomfortable writing fiction. My love was the personal essay rather than the novel.

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We wanted to test each other's capacity for survival: only if we had tried in vain to destroy one another would we know we were safe.

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

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

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

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