Alain de Botton Quotes, High Standards Quotes, Standards Quotes

Cynics are - beneath it all - only idealists with awkwardly high standards.

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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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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.

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

There is psychological pleasure in this takeoff, too, for the swiftness of the plane’s ascent is an exemplary symbol of transformation. The display of power can inspire us to imagine analogous, decisive shifts in our own lives, to imagine that we, too, might one day surge above much that now looms over us.” P. 38-39

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If one felt successful, there'd be so little incentive to be successful.

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The fear of saying something stupid (which stupid people never have) has censored far more good ideas than bad ones.

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The secular world is full of holes. We have secularized badly.

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

A virtuous, ordinary life, striving for wisdom but never far from folly, is achievement enough.

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If the behaviour of babies and small children is any guide, we emerge into the world with our tendencies to imbalance already well entrenched. In our playpens and high chairs, we are rarely far from displaying either hysterical happiness or savage disappointment, love or rage, mania or exhaustion--and, despite the growth of a more temperate exterior in adulthood, we seldom succeed in laying claim to lasting equilibrium, traversing our lives like stubbornly listing ships on choppy seas.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Baby Quotes , Disappointment Quotes

It is not just nature that defies us. Human life is as overwhelming... If we spend time in it [the vast spaces of nature], they may help us to accept more graciously the great, unfathomable events that molest our lives and will inevitably return us to dust.

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Everyone returns us to a different sense of ourselves, for we become a little of who they think we are.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Thinking Quotes , Return 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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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Glasses Quotes , Understanding Quotes

It is not necessarily at home that we best encounter our true selves. The furniture insists that we cannot change because it does not; the domestic setting keeps us tethered to the person we are in ordinary life, who may not be who we essentially are.

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

A dominant impulse on encountering beauty is to wish to hold on to it, to possess it and give it weight in one’s life. There is an urge to say, ‘I was here, I saw this and it mattered to me.

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What we find exotic abroad may be what we hunger for in vain at home.

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Our homes do not have to offer us permanent occupancy or store our clothes to merit the name. To speak of home in relation to a building is simply to recognise its harmony with our own prized internal song. Home can be an airport or a library, a garden or a motorway diner.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Song Quotes , Home Quotes

As victims of hurt, we frequently don't bring up what ails us, because so many wounds look absurd in the light of day.

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

The desire for high status is never stronger than in situations where "ordinary" life fails to answer a median need for dignity and comfort.

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Every realistic picture represents a choice as to which features of reality should be given prominence; no painting ever captures the whole.

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...if the beginnings of love and amorous politics are equally rosy, then the ends may be equally bloody.

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