Alain de Botton Quotes, Home Quotes, Mind 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.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Home Quotes , Mind 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

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

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

Most of us still caged within careers chosen for us by our not entirely worldly 18-22 year old selves.

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

The mind does most of its best thinking when we aren't there. The answers are there in the morning.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Morning Quotes , Thinking 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

Without sex, we would be dangerously invulnerable. We might believe we were not ridiculous. We wouldn't know rejection and humiliation so intimately.

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

The more dignity is widely and freely available in a society, the less people want to be famous.

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

Newspapers are being read all around. The point is not, of course, to glean new information, but rather to coax the mind out of its sleep-induced introspective temper.

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

As we write, so we build: to keep a record of what matters to us.

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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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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Relationship Quotes , Intimacy Quotes

Never too late to learn some embarrassingly basic, stupidly obvious things about oneself.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Inspirational Quotes , Obvious Things Quotes

For paranoia about 'what other people think' : remember that only some hate, a very few love - and almost all just don't care.

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

Mental health: having enough safe places in your mind for your thoughts to settle.

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Paying tax should be framed as a glorious civic duty worthy of gratitude - not a punishment for making money.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Gratitude Quotes , Punishment 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

Work finally begins when the fear of doing nothing exceeds the fear of doing it badly.

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Our greatest furies spring from events which violate our sense of the ground of our existence.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Spring Quotes , Events Quotes

In the works of Lucretius, we find two reasons why we shouldn't worry about death. If you have had a successful life, Lucretius tell us, there's no reason to mind its end. And, if you haven't had a good time, "Why do you seek to add more years, which would also pass but ill?"

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Successful Quotes , Years Quotes