Alain de Botton Quotes, Age Quotes, Aging Quotes

One's doing well if age improves even slightly one's capacity to hold on to that vital truism: "This too shall pass.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Age Quotes , Aging Quotes

Everyone wants a better life: very few of us want to be better people.

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

In reality, the likelihood of reaching the pinnacle of capitalist society today is only marginally better than were the chances of being accepted into the French nobility four centuries ago, though at least an aristocratic age was franker, and therefore kinder, about the odds. It did not relentlessly play up the possibilities open to all, and so, in turn, did not cruelly equate an ordinary life with a failed one.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Reality Quotes , Odds 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.

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

[T]he unsympathetic assessments we make of others are usually the result of nothing more sinister than our habit of looking at them in the wrong way, through lenses clouded by distraction, exhaustion and fear, which blind us to the fact that they are really, despite a thousand differences, just altered versions of ourselves: fellow fragile, uncertain, flawed beings likewise craving love and in urgent need of forgiveness.

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

Rather than employing it as a supplement to active, conscious seeing, they used the medium as a substitute, paying less attention to the world than they had done previously, taking it on faith that photography automatically assured them possession of it.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Photography Quotes , Attention Quotes

It's perhaps easier now than ever before to make a good living; it's perhaps harder than ever before to stay calm, to be free of career anxiety.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Motivation Quotes , Inspiration 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

People who readily accept the need for a gym will resist that their personalities might need some work too.

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

The lesson? To respond to the unexpected and hurtful behavior of others with something more than a wipe of the glasses, to see it as a chance to expand our understanding.

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

Journeys are the midwives of thought. Few places are more conducive to internal conversations than a moving plane, ship or train. There is an almost quaint correlation between what is in front of our eyes and the thoughts we are able to have in our heads: large thoughts at times requiring large views, new thoughts new places. Introspective reflections which are liable to stall are helped along by the flow of the landscape. The mind may be reluctant to think properly when thinking is all it is supposed to do.

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

The finest proof of our loyalty toward one another was our monstrous disloyalties towards everyone else.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Loyalty Quotes , Finest Quotes

Pick up any newspaper or magazine, open the TV, and you'll be bombarded with suggestions of how to have a successful life. Some of these suggestions are deeply unhelpful to our own projects and priorities - and we should take care.

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A simple problem of arithmetic: there are far more ambitions than there are grand destinies available.

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Instead of bringing back 1600 plants, we might return from our journeys with a collection of small unfêted but life-enhancing thoughts.

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

Most of us still caged within careers chosen for us by our not entirely worldly 18-22 year old selves.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Self Quotes , Years 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

The happiness that may emerge from taking a second look is central to Proust's therapeutic conception. It reveals the extent to which our dissatisfactions may be the result of failing to look properly at our lives rather than the result of anything inherently deficient about them.

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

It's as though either you accept [religious] doctrine and then you can have all the nice stuff, or you reject the doctrine and you're living in some kind of spiritual wasteland under the guidance of CNN and Walmart.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , God Quotes , Spiritual 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