Alain de Botton Quotes, Writing Quotes, Self Quotes

Writing isn’t a career choice. It’s self-medication that over time precipitates the madness it was meant to ward off.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Writing Quotes , Self 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

Feeling lost, crazy and desperate belongs to a good life as much as optimism, certainty and reason.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Good Life Quotes , Crazy Quotes

Travel agents would be wiser to ask us what we hope to change about our lives rather than simply where we wish to go.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Wish Quotes , Agents Quotes

Gaffe-focused journalism: revenge of intelligent people who know true evils are out there but lack the access/time to get to them.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Revenge Quotes , Intelligent Quotes

Life gives us no such handy markers - a storm comes, and far from this being a harbinger of death and collapse, during its course a person discovers love and truth, beauty and happiness, the rain lashing at the windows all the while.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Rain Quotes , Giving Quotes

We need a home in the psychological sense as much as we need one in the physical: to compensate for a vulnerability. We need a refuge to shore up our states of mind, because so much of the world is opposed to our allegiances. We need our rooms to align us to desirable versions of ourselves and to keep alive the important, evanescent sides of us.

6 years ago

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

Anxiety is the handmaiden of contemporary ambition.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Ambition Quotes , Anxiety Quotes

Art cannot single-handedly create enthusiasm... it merely contributes to enthusiasm and guides us to be more conscious of feelings that we might previously have experienced only tentatively or hurriedly.

6 years ago

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

We may not agree with what religions are trying to teach us, but we can admire the institutional way in which they're doing it.

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

We accept the need to train extensively to fly a plane; but think instinct should be enough for marrying and raising kids.

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

Perhaps because the origins of a certain kind of love lie in an impulse to escape ourselves and out weaknesses by an alliance with the beautiful and noble. But if the loved ones love us back, we are forced to return to ourselves, and are hence reminded of the things that had driven us into love in the first place. Perhaps it was not love we wanted after all, perhaps it was simply someone in whom to believe, but how can we continue to believe the the beloved now that they believe in us?

6 years ago

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

Bad art might be defined as a series of bad choices about what to show and what to leave out.

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

Let's say you went to Harvard or Oxford or Cambridge, and you said, 'I've come here because I'm in search of morality, guidance and consolation; I want to know how to live,' - they would show you the way to the insane asylum.

6 years ago

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

I know a lot about writing, but I don't know much about how other industries work. I've tried to use my naivety to my advantage.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Writing Quotes , Use Quotes

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

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

The more closely we analyze what we consider 'sexy,' the more clearly we will understand that eroticism is the feeling of excitement we experience at finding another human being who shares our values and our sense of the meaning of existence.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Sexy Quotes , Feelings Quotes

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

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What should worry us is not the number of people that oppose us, but how good their reasons are for doing so.

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

The only possible way to begin a book is to tell oneself that its eventual failure is guaranteed — but survivable.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Book Quotes , Way Quotes