Alain de Botton Quotes, Survival Quotes, Safe Quotes

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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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Survival Quotes , Safe Quotes

We fall in love because we long to escape from ourselves with someone as beautiful, intelligent, and witty as we are ugly, stupid, and dull. But what if such a perfect being should one day turn around and decide they will love us back? We can only be somewhat shocked-how can they be as wonderful as we had hoped when they have the bad taste to approve of someone like us?

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Beautiful Quotes , Witty 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

It's very hard to respect people on holiday - everybody looks so silly at the beach, it makes you hate humanity - but when you see people at their work they elicit respect, whether it's a mechanic, a stonemason or an accountant.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Beach Quotes , Hate Quotes

Most of our childhood is stored not in photos, but in certain biscuits, lights of day, smells, textures of carpet.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Light Quotes , Smell Quotes

One of love's greatest drawbacks is that, for a while at least, it is in danger of making us happy.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Danger Quotes

How do the stems connect to the roots?' 'Where is the mist coming from?' 'Why does one tree seem darker than another?' These questions are implicitly asked and answered in the process of sketching.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Roots Quotes , Tree 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

I assemble my ideas in pieces on a computer file, then gradually find a place for them on a piece of scaffolding I erect.

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

Our sense of what is valuable will hence be radically distorted if we must perpetually condemn as tedious everything we lack, simply because we lack it.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Valuable Quotes , Tedious Quotes

The activities of drawing, eating and drinking, all involve assimilations by the self of desirable elements from the world, a transfer of goodness from without to within.

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

Our jobs make relentless calls on a narrow band of our faculties, reducing our chances of achieving rounded personalities and leaving us to suspect (often in the gathering darkness of a Sunday evening) that much of who we are, or could be, has gone unexplored.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Jobs Quotes , Sunday 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

Work is most fulfilling when you're at the comfortable, exciting edge of not quite knowing what you are doing.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Knowing Quotes , Exciting Quotes

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

There is always the option of being emotionally lazy, that is, of quoting.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Lazy Quotes , Sloth Quotes

It's perhaps easier now than ever before to make a good living; it's perhaps harder than ever before to stay calm, to be free of career anxiety.

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

To cut out every negative root would simultaneously mean choking off positive elements that might arise from it further up the stem of the plant. We should not feel embarrassed by our difficulties, only by our failure to grow anything beautiful from them.

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

Memory is... similar to anticipation: an instrument of simplification and selection.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Memories Quotes , Anticipation Quotes

The universe is large and we are tiny, without the need for further religious superstructure. One can have so-called spiritual moments without belief in the spirit.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , God Quotes , Spiritual Quotes