Alain de Botton Quotes, Want Quotes, Married Quotes

What is fascinating about marriage is why anyone wants to get married.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Want Quotes , Married Quotes

Forgiveness requires a sense that bad behaviour is a sign of suffering rather than malice.

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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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You normally have to be bashed about a bit by life to see the point of daffodils, sunsets and uneventful nice days.

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Happiness is impossible for longer than 15 minutes. We are the descendants of creatures who, above all else, worried.

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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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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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Most anger stems from feelings of weakness, sadness and fear: hard to remember when one is at the receiving end of its defiant roar.

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

According to one influential wing of modern secular society there are few more disreputable fates than to end up being 'like everyone else' for 'everyone else' is a category that comprises the mediocre and the conformist, the boring and the suburban. The goal of all right-thinking people should be to mark themselves off from the crowd and 'stand out' in whatever way their talents allow.

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

Unhappiness can stem from having only one perspective to play with.

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It's hard loving those who don't much like themselves: "If you're so great, why would you think I'm so great.

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Reputation matters so much only because people so seldom think for themselves.

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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.

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

We often lose our tempers not with those who are actually to blame; just with those who love us enough to forgive us our foul moods.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Forgiving Quotes , Blame Quotes

We are tempted to believe that certain achievements and possessions will give us enduring satisfaction. We are invited to imagine ourselves scaling the steep cliff face of happiness in order to reach a wide, high plateau on which we will live out the rest of our lives; we are not reminded that soon after gaining the summit, we will be called down again into fresh lowlands of anxiety and desire.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Believe Quotes , Order 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.

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Instead of bringing back 1600 plants, we might return from our journeys with a collection of small unfêted but life-enhancing thoughts.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Travel Quotes , Journey Quotes

A lump rises in our throat at the sight of beauty from an implicit knowledge that the happiness it hints at is the exception.

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

One of the best protections against disappointment is to have a lot going on.

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Symons remarked that the most common and unhelpful illusion plaguing those who came to see him was the idea that they ought somehow, in the normal course of events, to have intuited long before they had finished their degrees, started families, bought houses and risen to the top of law firms - what they should properly be doing with their lives. They were tormented by a residual notion of having through some error or stupidity on their part missed out on their true calling.

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