Alain de Botton Quotes, Book Quotes, Writing 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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Arguments are like eels: however logical, they may slip from the minds weak grasp unless fixed there by imagery and style.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Eels Quotes , Style Quotes

As an atheist, I think there are lots of things religions get up to which are of value to non-believers - and one of those things is trying to be a bit better than we normally manage to be.

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

Perhaps because the origins of a certain kind of love lie in an impulse to escape ourselves and out weaknesses by an alliance with the beautiful and noble. But if the loved ones love us back, we are forced to return to ourselves, and are hence reminded of the things that had driven us into love in the first place. Perhaps it was not love we wanted after all, perhaps it was simply someone in whom to believe, but how can we continue to believe the the beloved now that they believe in us?

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

The study of maps and the perusal of travel books aroused in me a secret fascination that was at times almost irresistible.

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Choosing a spouse and a choosing career: the two great decisions for which society refuses to set up institutional guidance.

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

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If one felt successful, there'd be so little incentive to be successful.

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The origins and travels of our purchases remain matters of indifference, although to the more imaginative at least a slight dampness at the bottom of a carton, or an obscure code printed along a computer cable, may hint at processes of manufacture and transport nobler and more mysterious, more worthy of wonder and study, than the very goods themselves.

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The more dignity is widely and freely available in a society, the less people want to be famous.

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The difference between hope and despair is a different way of telling stories from the same facts.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Differences Quotes , Despair Quotes