Alain de Botton Quotes, Photography Quotes, Anxiety Quotes

Taking photographs can assuage the itch for possession sparked by the beauty of a place; our anxiety over losing a precious scene can decline with every click of the shutter.

6 years ago

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

It is not necessarily at home that we best encounter our true selves. The furniture insists that we cannot change because it does not; the domestic setting keeps us tethered to the person we are in ordinary life, who may not be who we essentially are.

6 years ago

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

Feeling lost, crazy and desperate belongs to a good life as much as optimism, certainty and reason.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Good Life Quotes , Crazy Quotes

We are presented with an unpleasant choice between either committing to peculiar concepts about immaterial deities or letting go entirely of a host of consoling, subtle or just charming rituals for which we struggle to find equivalents in secular society.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Letting Go Quotes , Struggle Quotes

People who readily accept the need for a gym will resist that their personalities might need some work too.

6 years ago

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

to design means forcing ourselves to unlearn what we believe we already know, patiently to take apart the mechanisms behind our reflexes and to acknowledge the mystery and stupefying complexity of everyday gestures like switching off a light of turning on a tap

6 years ago

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

Arguments are like eels: however logical, they may slip from the minds weak grasp unless fixed there by imagery and style.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Eels Quotes , Style Quotes

The pleasure we derive from journeys is perhaps dependent more on the mindset with which we travel than on the destination we travel to.

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

Architects themselves tend to shy away from the word, preferring instead to talk about the manipulation of space.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Space Quotes , Shy Quotes

Getting to the top has an unfortunate tendency to persuade people that the system is OK after all.

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

The fear of saying something stupid (which stupid people never have) has censored far more good ideas than bad ones.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Stupid Quotes , Ideas Quotes

Because the rhythm of conversation makes no allowance for dead periods, because the presence of others calls for continuous responses, we are left to regret the inanity of what we say, and the missed opportunity of what we do not.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Regret Quotes , Opportunity 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

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.

6 years ago

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

The longing for a destiny is no nowhere stronger than in our romantic life. All too often forced to share our bed with those who cannot fathom our soul, can we not be forgiven if we believe ourselves fated to stumble one day upon the man or woman of our dreams.

6 years ago

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

If it is true that love is the pursuit in another of qualities we lack in ourselves, then in our love of someone from another culture, one ambition may be to weld ourselves more closely to values missing from our own culture.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Ambition Quotes , Love Is Quotes

We are all more intelligent than we are capable, and awareness of the insanity of love has never saved anyone from the disease.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Intelligent Quotes , Insanity Quotes

The true nature of bureaucracy may be nowhere more obvious to the observer than in a developing country, for only there will it still be made manifest by the full complement of documents, files, veneered desks and cabinets - which convey the strict and inverse relationship between productivity and paperwork.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Country Quotes , May Quotes

The difference between hope and despair is a different way of telling stories from the same facts.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Differences Quotes , Despair Quotes

He did not mean to depress us, rather to free us from expectations which inspire bitterness. It is consoling, when love has let us down, to hear that happiness was never part of the plan.

6 years ago

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