Alain de Botton Quotes, Believe Quotes, Argument 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.

6 years ago

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

What am I supposed to do here? What am I supposed to think?

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes

Sweetness is the opposite of machismo, which is everywhere-and I really don't get on with machismo. I'm interested in sensitivity, and weakness, and fear, and anxiety, because I think that, at the end of the day, behind our masks, that's what we are.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Thinking Quotes , Opposites Quotes

Every adult life could be said to be defined by two great love stories: the story of our quest for sexual love and the story of our quest for love from the world.

6 years ago

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

Curiosity might be pictured as being made up of chains of small questions extending outwards, sometimes over huge distances, from a central hub composed of a few blunt, large questions.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Distance Quotes , Curiosity Quotes

Dreams reveal we never quite get 'over' anything: it's all still in there somewhere.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Dream Quotes , Get Over 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.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Play Quotes , Judgement Quotes

Maturity: knowing where you're crazy, trying to warn others of the fact and striving to keep yourself under control.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Crazy Quotes , Maturity Quotes

William James once made an acute point about the relationship between happiness and expectation. He argued that satisfaction with ourselves does not require us to succeed in every endeavour. We are not always humiliated by failing; we are humiliated only if we first invest our pride and sense of worth in a given achievement and then do not reach it.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Pride Quotes , Expectations Quotes

The origins and travels of our purchases remain matters of indifference, although to the more imaginative at least a slight dampness at the bottom of a carton, or an obscure code printed along a computer cable, may hint at processes of manufacture and transport nobler and more mysterious, more worthy of wonder and study, than the very goods themselves.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Hints Quotes , May Quotes

We each appear to hold within ourselves a range of divergent views as to our native qualities.. And amid such uncertainty, we typically turn to the wider world to settle the question of our significance.. we seem beholden to affections of others to endure ourselves.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Views Quotes , Quality Quotes

On paper, being good sounds great but a lot depends on the atmosphere of the workplace or community we live in. We tend to become good or bad depending on the cues sent out within a particular space.

6 years ago

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

After 40 (old age for most of man's history), one should strive to be more or less packed and ready to go were the end call to come.

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

Much of the really serious trouble in the world gets going with a sense of humiliation.

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

Being content is perhaps no less easy than playing the violin well: and requires no less practice.

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

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

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.

6 years ago

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

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Love Quotes , Men 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

We study biology, physics, movements of glaciers... Where are the classes on envy, feeling wronged, despair, bitterness.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Class Quotes , Envy Quotes