Alain de Botton Quotes, Artist Quotes, Greatness Quotes

There are selections so acute that they come to define a place, with the result that we can no longer travel through that landscape without being reminded of what a great artist noticed there.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Artist Quotes , Greatness Quotes

The real issue is not whether baking biscuits is meaningful, but the extent to which the activity can seem to be so after it has been continuously stretched and subdivided across five thousand lives.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Meaningful Quotes , Real Quotes

Everyone wants a better life: very few of us want to be better people.

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

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 degree of sympathy we feel regarding another's fiasco is directly proportional to how easy or difficult it is for us to imagine ourselves, under like circumstances, making a similar mistake.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Mistake Quotes , Degrees Quotes

I think people want to get married to end their emotional uncertainty. In a way, they want to end powerful feelings, or certainly the negative ones.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Powerful Quotes , Emotional Quotes

The telephone becomes an instrument of torture in the demonic hands of a beloved who doesn't call.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Hands Quotes , Telephones Quotes

Socrates, on being insulted in the marketplace, asked by a passerby, "Don't you worry about being called names?" retorted, "Why? Do you think I should resent it if an ass had kicked me?

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

Wealth is not an absolute. It is relative to desire. Every time we yearn for something we cannot afford, we grow poorer, whatever our resources. And every time we feel satisfied with what we have, we can be counted as rich, however little we may actually possess.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Desire Quotes , May 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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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Inspire Quotes , One Day Quotes

Social media has lots of benefits, but compared to Christianity, it tends to group people by interests. Religion puts you with people who have nothing in common except that you're human.

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

There's a whole category of people who miss out by not allowing themselves to be weird enough.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , People Quotes , Missing 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

Taking architecture seriously therefore makes some singular and strenuous demands upon us...It means conceding that we are inconveniently vulnerable to the colour of our wallpaper and that our sense of purpose may be derailed by an unfortunate bedspread

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

The inability to live in the present lies in the fear of leaving the sheltered position of anticipation or memory, and so of admitting that this is the only life that one is ever likely (heavenly intervention aside) to live.

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

It's clear to me that there is no good reason for many philosophy books to sound as complicated as they do.

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

Let death find us as we are building up our matchstick protests against its waves.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Building Up Quotes , Wave Quotes

The most attractive are not those who allow us to kiss them at once [we soon feel ungrateful] or those who never allow us to kiss them [we soon forget them], but those who coyly lead us between the two extremes.

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

It is by finding out what something is not that one comes closest to understanding what it is.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Understanding Quotes , Findings Quotes

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