Alain de Botton Quotes, Lonely Quotes, Book 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

Our homes do not have to offer us permanent occupancy or store our clothes to merit the name. To speak of home in relation to a building is simply to recognise its harmony with our own prized internal song. Home can be an airport or a library, a garden or a motorway diner.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Song Quotes , Home Quotes

Pegging your contentment to the overall state of the world rather than of your own life: the basis of morality, or a sort of madness?

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Contentment Quotes , World Quotes

Bitterness: anger that forgot where it came from.

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Tags : Alain de Botton 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

Must being in love always mean being in pain?

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

It would be foolish to describe the logistics hub as merely ugly, for it has the horrifying, soulless, immaculate beauty characteristic of many of the workplaces of the modern world.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Would Be Quotes , World 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

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

One kind of good book should leave you asking: how did the author know that about me?

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

Writing isn’t a career choice. It’s self-medication that over time precipitates the madness it was meant to ward off.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Writing Quotes , Self 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

Year-end financial statements express a truth about office life which is no less irrefutable yet also, in the end, no less irrelevant or irritating than an evolutionary biologist's proud reminder that the purpose of existence lies in the propagation of our genes.

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

what we call a home is merely any place that succeeds in making more consistenly available to us the important truths which the wider world ignores, or which our distracted and irresolute selves have trouble holding onto." (p123) Architecture of Happiness

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Home Quotes , Self 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

Gaffe-focused journalism: revenge of intelligent people who know true evils are out there but lack the access/time to get to them.

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What is a snob? A snob is anybody who takes a small part of you and uses that to come to a complete vision of who you are. That is snobbery.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Vision Quotes , Use Quotes

It's clear to me that there is no good reason for many philosophy books to sound as complicated as they do.

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We may seek a fortune for no greater reason than to secure the respect and attention of people who would otherwise look straight through us.

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

We are presented with an unpleasant choice between either committing to peculiar concepts about immaterial deities or letting go entirely of a host of consoling, subtle or just charming rituals for which we struggle to find equivalents in secular society.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Letting Go Quotes , Struggle Quotes