Alain de Botton Quotes, Powerful Quotes, Emotional 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.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Powerful Quotes , Emotional 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

Those who divorce aren't necessarily the most unhappy, just those neatly able to believe their misery is caused by one other person.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Believe Quotes , Divorce 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

So many complaints boil down to the belly ache of the fragile, mortal, ignored ego in a vast and indifferent universe.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Ego Quotes , Ignored Quotes

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

Though debts are condemned in the financial world, the world of friendship and love may perversely depend on well-managed debts.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Love And Friendship Quotes , And Love Quotes

There is no such thing as work-life balance. Everything worth fighting for unbalances your life.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Fighting Quotes , Balance Quotes

We might have been ready to offer sympathy, but in actuality there were stronger reasons to want to congratulate her for having found such a powerful motive to feel sad. We should have envied her for having located someone without whom she so firmly felt she could not survive, beyond the gate let along in a bare student bedroom in a suburb of Rio. If she had been able to view her situation from a sufficient distance, she might have been able to recognise this as one of the high points in her life.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Powerful Quotes , Distance 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

Rather than getting more spoilt with age, as difficulties pile up, epiphanies of gratitude abound.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Gratitude Quotes , Grateful Quotes

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

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Suffering Quotes , Behaviour 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

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.

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

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

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Writing Quotes , Doing Nothing Quotes

All tours are filled with humiliation. My publisher once hired a private jet to fly me to a venue where 1,000 people were waiting. It almost bankrupted him.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , People Quotes , Waiting 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 tend to believe in the modern secular world that if you tell someone something once, they'll remember it. ... Religions go, "Nonsense. You need to keep repeating the lesson 10 times a day. So get on your knees and repeat it." That's what all religions tell us: "Get on your knees and repeat it 10 or 20 or 15 times a day." Otherwise our minds are like sieves.

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

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

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

One kind of good book should leave you asking: how did the author know that about me?

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