Alain de Botton Quotes, People Quotes, Personality Quotes

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

6 years ago

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

...if the beginnings of love and amorous politics are equally rosy, then the ends may be equally bloody.

6 years ago

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

Don't despair: despair suggests you are in total control and know what is coming. You don't - surrender to events with hope.

6 years ago

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

It's very hard to respect people on holiday - everybody looks so silly at the beach, it makes you hate humanity - but when you see people at their work they elicit respect, whether it's a mechanic, a stonemason or an accountant.

6 years ago

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

A danger of travel is that we see things at the wrong time, before we have had a chance to build up the necessary receptivity and when new information is therefore as useless and fugitive as necklace beads without a connecting chain.

6 years ago

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

The telephone becomes an instrument of torture in the demonic hands of a beloved who doesn't call.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Hands Quotes , Telephones Quotes

Life gives us no such handy markers - a storm comes, and far from this being a harbinger of death and collapse, during its course a person discovers love and truth, beauty and happiness, the rain lashing at the windows all the while.

6 years ago

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

We are all more intelligent than we are capable, and awareness of the insanity of love has never saved anyone from the disease.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Intelligent Quotes , Insanity 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

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.

6 years ago

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

It is the most ambitious and driven among us who are the most sorely in need of having our reckless hopes dampened through immersive dousings in the darkness which religions have explored. This is a particular priority for secular Americans, perhaps the most anxious and disappointed people on earth, for their nation infuses them with the most extreme hopes about what they may be able to achieve in their working lives and relationships.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Atheist Quotes , People 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

6 years ago

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

Bad architecture is in the end as much a failure of psychology as of design. It is an example expressed through materials of the same tendencies which in other domains will lead us to marry the wrong people, choose inappropriate jobs and book unsuccessful holidays: the tendency not to understand who we are and what will satisfy us.

6 years ago

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

One of love's greatest drawbacks is that, for a while at least, it is in danger of making us happy.

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Intimacy is the capacity to be rather weird with someone - and finding that that's ok with them.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Relationship Quotes , Intimacy Quotes

There is real danger of a disconnect between what's on your business card and who you are deep inside, and it's not a disconnect that the world is ready to be patient with.

6 years ago

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

We may not agree with what religions are trying to teach us, but we can admire the institutional way in which they're doing it.

6 years ago

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

Intuition is unconscious accumulated experience informing judgement in real time.

6 years ago

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

We are tempted to believe that certain achievements and possessions will give us enduring satisfaction. We are invited to imagine ourselves scaling the steep cliff face of happiness in order to reach a wide, high plateau on which we will live out the rest of our lives; we are not reminded that soon after gaining the summit, we will be called down again into fresh lowlands of anxiety and desire.

6 years ago

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

Our sense of what is valuable will hence be radically distorted if we must perpetually condemn as tedious everything we lack, simply because we lack it.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Valuable Quotes , Tedious Quotes