Alain de Botton Quotes, Falling In Love Quotes, Lying 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?

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

The attentions of others matter to us because we are afflicted by a congenital uncertainty as to our own value, as a result of which affliction we tend to allow others' appraisals to play a determining role in how we see ourselves. Our sense of identity is held captive by the judgements of those we live among.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Play Quotes , Judgement Quotes

Feeling lost, crazy and desperate belongs to a good life as much as optimism, certainty and reason.

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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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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Survival Quotes , Safe Quotes

If it is true that love is the pursuit in another of qualities we lack in ourselves, then in our love of someone from another culture, one ambition may be to weld ourselves more closely to values missing from our own culture.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Ambition Quotes , Love Is Quotes

My writing always came out of a very personal place, out of an attempt to stay sane.

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Work is most fulfilling when you're at the comfortable, exciting edge of not quite knowing what you are doing.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Knowing Quotes , Exciting 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

A notorious inability to express emotions makes human beings the only animals capable of suicide.

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Not being understood may be taken as a sign that there is much in one to understand.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Wisdom Quotes , Taken Quotes

What am I supposed to do here? What am I supposed to think?

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes

There is no such thing as work-life balance. Everything worth fighting for unbalances your life.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Fighting Quotes , Balance Quotes

The real issue is not whether baking biscuits is meaningful, but the extent to which the activity can seem to be so after it has been continuously stretched and subdivided across five thousand lives.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Meaningful Quotes , Real Quotes

Do you love me enough that I may be weak with you? Everyone loves strength, but do you love me for my weakness? That is the real test.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Real Quotes , Weakness Quotes

.. if you asked most people whether they believed in love or not, they’d probably say they didn’t. Yet that’s not necessarily what they truly think. It’s just the way they defend themselves against what they want. They believe in it, but pretend they don’t until they’re allowed to. Most people would throw away all their cynicism if they could. The majority just never gets the chance.

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

Anyone who isn't embarrassed of who they were last year probably isn't learning enough.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Years Quotes , Lasts 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

The desire for high status is never stronger than in situations where "ordinary" life fails to answer a median need for dignity and comfort.

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

To be loved by someone is to realize how much they share the same needs that lie at the heart of our own attraction to them. Albert Camus suggested that we fall in love with people because, from the outside, they look so whole, physically whole and emotionally 'together' - when subjectively we feel dispersed and confused. We would not love if there were no lack within us, but we are offended by the discovery of a similar lack in the other. Expecting to find the answer, we find only the duplicate of our own problem.

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

Although I don't believe in God, Bach's music shows me what a love of God must feel like.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Believe Quotes , God Love Quotes