Alain de Botton Quotes, Book Quotes, Giving Quotes

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.

6 years ago

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

I'm also interested in the modern suggestion that you can have a combination of love and sex in a marriage - which no previous society has ever believed.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Sex Quotes , Suggestions Quotes

I am conscious of trying to stretch the boundaries of non-fiction writing. It's always surprised me how little attention many non-fiction writers pay to the formal aspects of their work.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Writing Quotes , Trying Quotes

Our jobs make relentless calls on a narrow band of our faculties, reducing our chances of achieving rounded personalities and leaving us to suspect (often in the gathering darkness of a Sunday evening) that much of who we are, or could be, has gone unexplored.

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

Many moments in religion seem attractive to me even though I can't believe in any of it.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Believe Quotes , Moments 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

The pleasure we derive from journeys is perhaps dependent more on the mindset with which we travel than on the destination we travel to.

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

We are sensitized by the books we read. And the more books we read, and the deeper their lessons sink into us, the more pairs of glasses we have. And those glasses enable us to see things we would have otherwise missed.

6 years ago

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

We tend to believe in the modern secular world that if you tell someone something once, they'll remember it. ... Religions go, "Nonsense. You need to keep repeating the lesson 10 times a day. So get on your knees and repeat it." That's what all religions tell us: "Get on your knees and repeat it 10 or 20 or 15 times a day." Otherwise our minds are like sieves.

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

We should not feel embarrassed by our difficulties, only by our failure to grow anything beautiful from them.

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The challenge of modern relationships: how to prove more interesting than the other's smartphone.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Smartphones Quotes , Interesting 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

Most anger stems from feelings of weakness, sadness and fear: hard to remember when one is at the receiving end of its defiant roar.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Sadness Quotes , Feelings Quotes

I never wavered in my certainty that God did not exist. I was simply liberated by the thought that there might be a way to engage with religion without having to subscribe to its supernatural content - a way, to put it in more abstract terms, to think about Fathers without upsetting my respectful memory of my own father. I recognized that my continuing resistance to theories of an afterlife or of heavenly residents was no justification for giving up on the music, buildings, prayers, rituals, feasts, shrines, pilgrimages, communal meals and illustrated manuscripts of the faiths.

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The challenge for a human now is to be more interesting to another than his or her smartphone.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Smartphones Quotes , Interesting Quotes

Serious journalists often imagine society is adrift because people don't know certain things. Yet often, they know but just don't care. So the task of serious journalism isn't just to lay out truths. It is to make vital truths compelling to a big audience.

6 years ago

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

The true nature of bureaucracy may be nowhere more obvious to the observer than in a developing country, for only there will it still be made manifest by the full complement of documents, files, veneered desks and cabinets - which convey the strict and inverse relationship between productivity and paperwork.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Country Quotes , May 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

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

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Paying tax should be framed as a glorious civic duty worthy of gratitude - not a punishment for making money.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Gratitude Quotes , Punishment Quotes