Alain de Botton Quotes, Smell Quotes, People Quotes

Out of the millions of people we live among, most of whom we habitually ignore and are ignored by in turn, there are always a few that hold hostage our capacity for happiness, whom we could recognize by their smell alone and whom we would rather die than be without.

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

Most of our childhood is stored not in photos, but in certain biscuits, lights of day, smells, textures of carpet.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Light Quotes , Smell Quotes

In the gap between who we wish one day to be and who we are at present, must come pain, anxiety, envy and humiliation.

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

Insomnia is a glamorous term for thoughts you forgot to have in the day.

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

As we write, so we build: to keep a record of what matters to us.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Writing Quotes , What Matters Quotes

Rather than saying 'I hate mess', it might draw more compassion to say, 'mess terrifies me as a harbinger of catastrophe'.

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

Every adult life could be said to be defined by two great love stories: the story of our quest for sexual love and the story of our quest for love from the world.

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

There are things that are not spoken about in polite society. Very quickly in most conversations you'll reach a moment where someone goes, 'Oh, that's a bit heavy,' or 'Eew, disgusting.' And literature is a place where that stuff goes; where people whisper to each other across books, the writer to the reader. I think that stops you feeling lonely – in the deeper sense, lonely.

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

The dream of the news is that it makes us care about other people and situations. But we cannot identify with people to whom we haven't been introduced. Humans will only respond to art, to people who are skilled in making you care.

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

Endeavoring to purchase something we think beautiful may in fact be the most unimaginative way of dealing with the longing it excites in us, just as trying to sleep with someone may be the bluntest response to a feeling of love.

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

It is perhaps sad books that best console us when we are sad, and to lonely service stations that we should drive when there is no one for us to hold or love.

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

It is this idea 'decency' should be attached to wealth -and 'indecency'' to poverty - that forms the core of one strand of skeptical complaint against the modern status-ideal. Why should failure to make money be taken as a sign of an unconditionally flawed human being rather than of a fiasco in one particular area if the far larger, more multifaceted, project of leading a good life? Why should both wealth and poverty be read as the predominant guides to an individual's morals ?

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Good Life Quotes , Taken 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.

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

Reputation matters so much only because people so seldom think for themselves.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Thinking Quotes , People 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

According to Montaigne, it was the oppressive notion that we had complete mental control over our bodies, and the horror of departing from this portrait of normality, that had left the man unable to perform sexually.

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

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

I passionately believe that's it's not just what you say that counts, it's also how you say it - that the success of your argument critically depends on your manner of presenting it.

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

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

Despite its maddeningly vague, inarticulate form, anxiety is almost always trying to tell you something useful and apposite.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Always Trying Quotes , Anxiety Quotes