Alain de Botton Quotes, Ideas Quotes, Cynical Quotes

Literature deeply stands opposed to the dominant value system-the one that rewards money and power. Writers are on the other side-they make us sympathetic to ideas and feelings that are of deep importance but can’t afford airtime in a commercialized, status-consciou s, and cynical world.

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

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

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

A world where a majority had imbibed the lessons implicit within tragic art would be one in which the consequences of our failures would necessarily cease to weigh upon us so heavily.

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

What is fascinating about marriage is why anyone wants to get married.

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The only people we can think of as normal are those we don't yet know very well.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Thinking Quotes , People 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.

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

Status Anxiety: A worry, so pernicious as to be capable of ruining extended stretches of our lives, that we are in danger of failing to conform to the ideals of success laid down by our society and that we may as a result be stripped of dignity and respect; a worry that we are currently occupying too modest a rung or are about to fall to a lower one.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Happiness Quotes , Success Quotes

Forcing people to eat together is an effective way to promote tolerance.

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Once I began to consider everything as being of potential interest, objects released latent layers of value.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Layers Quotes , Interest Quotes

Philosophy, art, politics, religion and bohemia have never sought to do away entirely with the status hierarchy; they have attemptee, rather, to institute new kinds of hierarchies based on sets of values unrecognised by, and critical of, those of the majority.. They have provided us with persuasive and consoling reminders that there is more than one way of succeeding in life.

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

Architects themselves tend to shy away from the word, preferring instead to talk about the manipulation of space.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Space Quotes , Shy Quotes

You need a long hard day's work to reveal the logic of the craving for very bad tv and alcohol.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Long Quotes , Alcohol Quotes

Not everyone is worth listening to.

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When Proust urges us to evaluate the world properly, he repeatedly reminds us of the value of modest scenes.

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

It seems that most of us could benefit from a brush with a near-fatal disaster to help us recognise the important things that we are too defeated or embittered to recognise from day to day.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Important Quotes , Benefits Quotes

When you look at the Moon, you think, ‘I’m really small. What are my problems?’ It sets things into perspective. We should all look at the Moon a bit more often.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Motivation Quotes , Inspiration Quotes

The largest part of what we call 'personality' is determined by how we've opted to defend ourselves against anxiety and sadness".

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

An argument in a couple: 2 people attempting to introduce each other to important truths - by panicked shouting.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Couple Quotes , People 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

It is perhaps when our lives are at their most problematic that we are likely to be most receptive to beautiful things.

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