Alain de Botton Quotes, Trying Quotes, Truthful Quotes

Being funny should be an incidental byproduct of trying to get to something truthful, not a destination in itself.

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

The genius of religions is that they structure the inner life.

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Artistic accounts involve severe abbreviations of what reality will force upon us.

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Taking architecture seriously therefore makes some singular and strenuous demands upon us...It means conceding that we are inconveniently vulnerable to the colour of our wallpaper and that our sense of purpose may be derailed by an unfortunate bedspread

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

The lesson? To respond to the unexpected and hurtful behavior of others with something more than a wipe of the glasses, to see it as a chance to expand our understanding.

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Intimacy is the capacity to be rather weird with someone - and finding that that's ok with them.

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We wanted to test each other's capacity for survival: only if we had tried in vain to destroy one another would we know we were safe.

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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

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

Politics is so difficult, it's generally only people who aren't quite up to the task who feel convinced they are.

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One of the unexpectedly important things that art can do for us is to teach us how to suffer more successfully.

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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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There is a devilishly direct relationship between the significance of an idea and how nervous we become at the prospect of having to think about it.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Thinking Quotes , Ideas 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

Although I don't believe in God, Bach's music shows me what a love of God must feel like.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Believe Quotes , God Love Quotes

There is real danger of a disconnect between what's on your business card and who you are deep inside, and it's not a disconnect that the world is ready to be patient with.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Real Quotes , Cards Quotes

In the works of Lucretius, we find two reasons why we shouldn't worry about death. If you have had a successful life, Lucretius tell us, there's no reason to mind its end. And, if you haven't had a good time, "Why do you seek to add more years, which would also pass but ill?"

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The price we have paid for expecting to be so much more than our ancestors is a perpetual anxiety that we are far from being all we might be.

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It would scarcely be acceptable, for example, to ask in the course of an ordinary conversation what our society holds to be the purpose of work.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Ordinary Quotes , Example Quotes

One wants never to give up this crystalline perspective. One wants to keep counterpositioning home with what one knows of alternative realities, as they exist in Tunis or Hyderabad. One wants never to forget that nothing here is normal, that the streets are different in Wisebaden, and Louyang, that this is just one of many possible worlds.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Giving Up Quotes , Home Quotes