Alain de Botton Quotes - Page 10

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• Philosophy had supplied Socrates with convictions in which he had been able to have rational, as opposed to hysterical, confidence when faced with disapproval.

  Alain de Botton

  Philosophy, Able, Hysterical

  "The Consolations of Philosophy". Book by Alain de Botton, 2000.

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• Most good thinking has its origin in fear.

  Alain de Botton

  Thinking, Good Thinking

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• 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.

  Alain de Botton

  Sleep, Mind, Information

  "The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work". Book by Alain de Botton, 2008.

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

  Alain de Botton

  Building Up, Wave, Matchsticks

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• The most unbearable thing about many successful people is not - as we flatteringly think - how lazy they are, but how hard they work.

  Alain de Botton

  Successful, Thinking, People

  Twitter post from Jul 08, 2013

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• How generous was it to offer gifts to people one knew would never accept them?

  Alain de Botton

  People, Accepting, Offers

  1994 The Romanic Movement,'Martyrdom'.

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• It is perhaps sad books that best console us when we are sad.

  Alain de Botton

  Book, Sadness, Console

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• To one's enemies: "I hate myself more than you ever could.

  Alain de Botton

  Hate, Enemy, Self Loathing

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• There is a longing for a return to a time without the need for choices, free of the regret at the inevitable loss that all choice (however wonderful) has entailed.

  Alain de Botton

  Regret, Loss, Choices

  Alain de Botton (2006). “On Love: A Novel”, p.112, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• 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.

  Alain de Botton

  Photography, Anxiety, Losing

  Alain de Botton (2003). “The Art of Travel”, p.114, Penguin UK

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• 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.

  Alain de Botton

  Memories, Lying, Leaving

  Alain de Botton (2006). “On Love: A Novel”, p.126, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• My writing always came out of a very personal place, out of an attempt to stay sane.

  Alain de Botton

  Writing, Sane

  "Office affairs". Interview with Lynn Barber, www.theguardian.com. March 21, 2009.

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• We are tempted to believe that certain achievements and possessions will give us enduring satisfaction. We are invited to imagine ourselves scaling the steep cliff face of happiness in order to reach a wide, high plateau on which we will live out the rest of our lives; we are not reminded that soon after gaining the summit, we will be called down again into fresh lowlands of anxiety and desire.

  Alain de Botton

  Believe, Order, Giving

  Alain De Botton (2008). “Status Anxiety”, p.196, Vintage

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• [T]he unsympathetic assessments we make of others are usually the result of nothing more sinister than our habit of looking at them in the wrong way, through lenses clouded by distraction, exhaustion and fear, which blind us to the fact that they are really, despite a thousand differences, just altered versions of ourselves: fellow fragile, uncertain, flawed beings likewise craving love and in urgent need of forgiveness.

  Alain de Botton

  Assessment, Differences, Way

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

  Alain de Botton

  Ego, Ignored, Ache

  Twitter post from Sep 17, 2013

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• The more familiar two people become, the more the language they speak together departs from that of the ordinary, dictionary-defined discourse. Familiarity creates a new language, an in-house language of intimacy that carries reference to the story the two lovers are weaving together and that cannot be readily understood by others.

  Alain de Botton

  Love, Two, People

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• The dream of the news is that it makes us care about other people and situations. But we cannot identify with people to whom we haven't been introduced. Humans will only respond to art, to people who are skilled in making you care.

  Alain de Botton

  Dream, Art, People

  "Alain de Botton in quotes: 'The news promotes a toxic society of envy'" by Marta Bausells, www.theguardian.com. August 10, 2014.

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

  Alain de Botton

  Spring, Events, Existence

  "The Consolations of Philosophy". Book by Alain de Botton, 2000.

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• He was a volatile mixture of confidence and vulnerability. He could deliver extended monologues on professional matters, then promptly stop in his tracks to peer inquisitively into his guest's eyes for signs of boredom or mockery, being intelligent enough to be unable fully to believe in his own claims to significance. He might, in a past life, have been a particularly canny and sharp-tongued royal advisor.

  Alain de Botton

  Believe, Eye, Intelligent

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• It is this idea 'decency' should be attached to wealth -and 'indecency'' to poverty - that forms the core of one strand of skeptical complaint against the modern status-ideal. Why should failure to make money be taken as a sign of an unconditionally flawed human being rather than of a fiasco in one particular area if the far larger, more multifaceted, project of leading a good life? Why should both wealth and poverty be read as the predominant guides to an individual's morals ?

  Alain de Botton

  Good Life, Taken, Ideas

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• If our lives are dominated by a search for happiness, then perhaps few activities reveal as much about the dynamics of this quest - in all its ardour and paradoxes - than our travels.

  Alain de Botton

  Happiness, Quests, Dynamics

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• It is not just nature that defies us. Human life is as overwhelming... If we spend time in it [the vast spaces of nature], they may help us to accept more graciously the great, unfathomable events that molest our lives and will inevitably return us to dust.

  Alain de Botton

  Life, Dust, Space

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• Every fall into love involves the triumph of hope over self-knowledge. We fall in love hoping we won't find in another what we know is in ourselves, all the cowardice, weakness, laziness, dishonesty, compromise, and stupidity. We throw a cordon of love around the chosen one and decide that everything within it will somehow be free of our faults. We locate inside another a perfection that eludes us within ourselves, and through our union with the beloved hope to maintain (against the evidence of all self-knowledge) a precarious faith in our species.

  Alain de Botton

  Falling In Love, Elude Us, Self

  Alain de Botton (2015). “On Love: A Novel”, p.14, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• We read the weird tales in newspapers to crowd out the even weirder stuff inside us.

  Alain de Botton

  Crowds, Stuff, Newspapers

  Twitter post from May 11, 2012

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• Not being understood may be taken as a sign that there is much in one to understand.

  Alain de Botton

  Wisdom, Taken, Acceptance

  Alain De Botton (2008). “Status Anxiety”, p.284, Vintage

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