Alain de Botton Quotes, Moving Quotes, Journey Quotes

Journeys are the midwives of thought. Few places are more conducive to internal conversations than moving planes, ships or trains.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Moving Quotes , Journey Quotes

It seemed an advantage to be traveling alone. 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...Being closely observed by a companion can also inhibit our observation of others; then, too, we may become caught up in adjusting ourselves to the companion's questions and remarks, or feel the need to make ourselves seem more normal than is good for our curiosity.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Company We Keep Quotes , Expectations Quotes

Bitterness: anger that forgot where it came from.

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Intuition is unconscious accumulated experience informing judgement in real time.

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Why, then, if expensive things cannot bring us remarkable joy, are we so powerfully drawn to them?

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In their different ways, art and philosophy help us, in Schopenhauer's words, to turn pain into knowledge.

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

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

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

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The only possible way to begin a book is to tell oneself that its eventual failure is guaranteed — but survivable.

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

We are certainly influenced by role models, and if we are surrounded by images of beautiful rich people, we will start to think that to be beautiful and rich is very important - just as in the Middle Ages, people were surrounded by images of religious piety.

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

An understandable hunger for potential clients tempts many [career counseling therapists] to overpromise, like creative writing teachers who, out of greed or sentimentality, sometimes imply that all of their students could one day produce worthwhile literature, rather than frankly acknowledging the troubling truth, anathema to a democratic society, that the great writer, like the contented worker, remains an erratic and anomalous event, immune to the methods of factory farming.

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

We are sensitized by the books we read. And the more books we read, and the deeper their lessons sink into us, the more pairs of glasses we have. And those glasses enable us to see things we would have otherwise missed.

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

By travelling across frontiers, on horseback and in the imagination, Montaigne invited us to to exchange local prejudices and the self division they induced for less constraining identities as citizens of the world.

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

People who go on to be writers are those who can forgive themselves the horror of the first draft.

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

Sweetness is the opposite of machismo, which is everywhere-and I really don't get on with machismo. I'm interested in sensitivity, and weakness, and fear, and anxiety, because I think that, at the end of the day, behind our masks, that's what we are.

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

Wealth is not an absolute. It is relative to desire. Every time we yearn for something we cannot afford, we grow poorer, whatever our resources. And every time we feel satisfied with what we have, we can be counted as rich, however little we may actually possess.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Desire Quotes , May Quotes

One of the better guarantors of ending up in a good relationship: an advanced capacity to be alone.

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Happiness is impossible for longer than 15 minutes. We are the descendants of creatures who, above all else, worried.

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One of our major flaws, and causes of unhappiness, is that we find it hard to take note of appreciate and be grateful for what is always around us. We suffer because we lose sight of the value of what is before us and yearn, often unfairly, for the imagined attraction elsewhere.

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

Every time we feel satisfied with what we have, we can be counted as rich, however little we may actually possess.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , May Quotes , Littles Quotes