Alain de Botton Quotes, Iron Quotes, Velvet Quotes

Responsible for wrapping the iron fist of authority in its velvet glove is Jane Axtell, head of the accountancy firm's Human Resources department.

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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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It seems the only way to write a half decent book is to worry oneself sick on an hourly basis that one is producing a complete disaster.

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

Perhaps it is true that we do not really exist until there is someone there to see us existing, we cannot properly speak until there is someone who can understand what we are saying in essence, we are not wholly alive until we are loved.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Essence Quotes , Alive Quotes

The more familiar two people become, the more the language they speak together departs from that of the ordinary, dictionary-defined discourse. Familiarity creates a new language, an in-house language of intimacy that carries reference to the story the two lovers are weaving together and that cannot be readily understood by others.

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

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

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

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Never too late to learn some embarrassingly basic, stupidly obvious things about oneself.

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Good books put a finger on emotions that are deeply our own - but that we could never have described on our own.

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

Anxiety is the handmaiden of contemporary ambition.

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

Her lie was symptomatic of a certain pride she took in mocking the romantic, in being unsentimental, matter-of-fact, stoic; yet at heart she was the oppo site: idealistic, dreamy, giving, and deeply attached to everything she liked verbally to dismiss as "mushy.

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

At the beginning of human history, as we struggled to light fires and to chisel fallen trees into rudimentary canoes, who could have predicted that long after we had managed to send men to the moon and areoplanes to Australasia, we would still have such trouble knowing how to tolerate ourselves, forgive our loved ones, and apologise for our tantrums?

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

We depend on our surroundings obliquely to embody the moods and ideas we respect and then to remind us of them. We look to our buildings to hold us, like a kind of psychological mould, to a helpful vision of ourselves. We arrange around us material forms which communicate to us what we need — but are at constant risk of forgetting what we need — within. We turn to wallpaper, benches, paintings and streets to staunch the disappearance of our true selves.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Self Quotes , Ideas Quotes

The longing for a destiny is no nowhere stronger than in our romantic life. All too often forced to share our bed with those who cannot fathom our soul, can we not be forgiven if we believe ourselves fated to stumble one day upon the man or woman of our dreams.

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Getting to the top has an unfortunate tendency to persuade people that the system is OK after all.

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The greatest difficulty of Travel is that one is forced to take oneself along.

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It is striking how much more seriously we are likely to be taken after we have been dead a few centuries.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Taken Quotes , Century Quotes

Our greatest furies spring from events which violate our sense of the ground of our existence.

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

The degree of sympathy we feel regarding another's fiasco is directly proportional to how easy or difficult it is for us to imagine ourselves, under like circumstances, making a similar mistake.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Mistake Quotes , Degrees Quotes

We used to build temples, and museums are about as close as secular society dares to go in facing up to the idea that a good building can change your life (and a bad one ruin it).

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Museums Quotes , Secular Society Quotes