Alain de Botton Quotes, Real Quotes, Weakness Quotes

Do you love me enough that I may be weak with you? Everyone loves strength, but do you love me for my weakness? That is the real test.

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

The pre-scientific age, whatever its deficiencies, had at least offered its members the peace of mind that follows from knowing all man-made achievements to be nothing next to the grandeur of the universe. We, more blessed in our gadgetry but less humble in our outlook, have been left... having no more compelling repository of veneration than our brilliant, precise, blinkered and morally troubling fellow human beings.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Blessed Quotes , Humble Quotes

Our bodies hold our minds hostage to their whims and rhythms.

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

as the determinants of high status keep shifting, so, too, naturally, will the triggers of status anxiety be altered.

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

Our minds are susceptible to the influence of external voices telling us what we require to be satisfied, voices that may drown out the faint sounds emitted by our souls and distract us from the careful, arduous task of accurately naming our priorities.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Voice Quotes , Priorities Quotes

The problem is if you really believe in a society where those who merit to get to the top, get to the top, you’ll also, by implication … believe in a society where those who deserve to get to the bottom also get to the bottom and stay there.

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

Most good thinking has its origin in fear.

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

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

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

Our responses to the world are crucially moulded by the company we keep, for we temper our curiosity to fit in with the expectations of others.

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

Pegging your contentment to the overall state of the world rather than of your own life: the basis of morality, or a sort of madness?

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Contentment Quotes , World Quotes

One's doing well if age improves even slightly one's capacity to hold on to that vital truism: "This too shall pass.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Age Quotes , Aging 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

The only way to be happy is to realise how much depends on how you look at things

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

The architects who benefit us most maybe those generous enough to lay aside their claims to genius in order to devote themselves to assembling graceful but predominantly unoriginal boxes. Architecture should have the confidence and the kindness to be a little boring.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Kindness Quotes , Order Quotes

Sweetness is the opposite of machismo, which is everywhere-and I really don't get on with machismo. I'm interested in sensitivity, and weakness, and fear, and anxiety, because I think that, at the end of the day, behind our masks, that's what we are.

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

Curiosity might be pictured as being made up of chains of small questions extending outwards, sometimes over huge distances, from a central hub composed of a few blunt, large questions.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Distance Quotes , Curiosity Quotes

It was no longer her absence that wounded me, but my growing indifference to it. Forgetting, however calming, was also a reminder of infidelity to what I had at one time held so dear.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Infidelity Quotes , Growing Quotes

By travelling across frontiers, on horseback and in the imagination, Montaigne invited us to to exchange local prejudices and the self division they induced for less constraining identities as citizens of the world.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Self Quotes , Imagination 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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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Travel Quotes , Giving Quotes