Alain de Botton Quotes, Book Quotes, Glasses Quotes

We are sensitized by the books we read. And the more books we read, and the deeper their lessons sink into us, the more pairs of glasses we have. And those glasses enable us to see things we would have otherwise missed.

6 years ago

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

Bad architecture is in the end as much a failure of psychology as of design. It is an example expressed through materials of the same tendencies which in other domains will lead us to marry the wrong people, choose inappropriate jobs and book unsuccessful holidays: the tendency not to understand who we are and what will satisfy us.

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

We should read other people's books in order to learn what we feel; it is our own thoughts we should be developing, even if it is another writer's thought that help us to do so.

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

Unnatural to expect that learning to be happy should be any easier than, say, learning to play the violin or require any less practice.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Practice Quotes , Play 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

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

Philosophy, art, politics, religion and bohemia have never sought to do away entirely with the status hierarchy; they have attemptee, rather, to institute new kinds of hierarchies based on sets of values unrecognised by, and critical of, those of the majority.. They have provided us with persuasive and consoling reminders that there is more than one way of succeeding in life.

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

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

It looks like it’s wasting time, but literature is actually the ultimate time-saver - because it gives us access to a range of emotions and events that it would take you years, decades, millennia to try to experience directly. Literature is the greatest reality simulator - a machine that puts you through infinitely more situations than you can ever directly witness.

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

Pick up any newspaper or magazine, open the TV, and you'll be bombarded with suggestions of how to have a successful life. Some of these suggestions are deeply unhelpful to our own projects and priorities - and we should take care.

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I went to church and couldn't swallow it. The music was nice but I don't belong there.

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Every realistic picture represents a choice as to which features of reality should be given prominence; no painting ever captures the whole.

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The finest proof of our loyalty toward one another was our monstrous disloyalties towards everyone else.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Loyalty Quotes , Finest Quotes

Art holds out the promise of inner wholeness.

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Rather than teasing the buyers, we may blame the society in which they lived for setting up a situation where the purchase of ornate cabinets felt psychologically necessary and rewarding, where respect was dependent on baroque displays. Rather than a tale of greed, the history of luxury could more accurately be read as a record of emotional trauma. It is the legacy of those who have felt pressured by the disdain of others to add an extraordinary amount to their bare selves in order to signal that they too may lay a claim to love.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Emotional Quotes , Luxury 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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The best cure for one's bad tendencies is to see them in action in another person.

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Being content is perhaps no less easy than playing the violin well: and requires no less practice.

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

There are people who say, 'Oh this guy is quite thick.' I think the reason is that, increasingly, I don't mind being simple in terms of literary expression. Others say, 'No, no, no. He went to Cambridge. He got a good degree. He must be Einstein.'

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

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

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