Alain de Botton Quotes, Optimistic Quotes, Frustration 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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It is no coincidence that the Western attraction to sublime landscapes developed at precisely the moment when traditional beliefs in God began to wane.

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It is in books, poems, paintings which often give us the confidence to take seriously feelings in ourselves that we might otherwise never have thought to acknowledge.

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

Unnatural to expect that learning to be happy should be any easier than, say, learning to play the violin or require any less practice.

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

Taking architecture seriously therefore makes some singular and strenuous demands upon us...It means conceding that we are inconveniently vulnerable to the colour of our wallpaper and that our sense of purpose may be derailed by an unfortunate bedspread

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Mean Quotes , Purpose Quotes

In the oasis complex, the thirsty man images he sees water, palm trees, and shade not because he has evidence for the belief, but because he has a need for it. Desperate needs bring about a hallucination of their solution: thirst hallucinates water, the need for love hallucinates a prince or princess. The oasis complex is never a complete delusion: the man in the desert does see something on the horizon. It is just that the palms have withered, the well is dry, and the place is infected with locusts.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Love Quotes , Princess Quotes

You normally have to be bashed about a bit by life to see the point of daffodils, sunsets and uneventful nice days.

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The genius of religions is that they structure the inner life.

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The universe is large and we are tiny, without the need for further religious superstructure. One can have so-called spiritual moments without belief in the spirit.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , God Quotes , Spiritual Quotes

Memory is... similar to anticipation: an instrument of simplification and selection.

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as the determinants of high status keep shifting, so, too, naturally, will the triggers of status anxiety be altered.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Anxiety Quotes , Shifting Quotes

He was marked out by his relentless ability to find fault with others' mediocrity - suggesting that a certain type of intelligence may be at heart nothing more or less than a superior capacity for dissatisfaction.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Heart Quotes , Mediocrity Quotes

Cynics are - beneath it all - only idealists with awkwardly high standards.

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For paranoia about 'what other people think' : remember that only some hate, a very few love - and almost all just don't care.

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

Nowhere was the airport's charm more concentrated than on the screens placed at intervals across the terminal which announced, in deliberately workmanlike fonts, the itineraries of aircraft about to take to the skies. These screens implied a feeling of infinite and immediate possibility: they suggested the ease with which we might impulsively approach a ticket desk and, within a few hours, embark for a country where the call to prayer rang out over shuttered whitewashed houses, where we understood nothing of the language and where no one knew our identities.

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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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Architects themselves tend to shy away from the word, preferring instead to talk about the manipulation of space.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Space Quotes , Shy 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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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Regret Quotes , Opportunity Quotes

At the heart of every frustration lies a basic structure: the collision of a wish with an unyielding reality.

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

Distress at losing an object can be as much a frustration at the intellectual mystery of the disappearance as about the loss itself.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Loss Quotes , Frustration Quotes