Alain de Botton Quotes - Page 11

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• A 'good job' can be both practically attractive while still not good enough to devote your entire life to.

  Alain de Botton

  Jobs, Work, Not Good Enough

  7 Copy quote

• William James once made an acute point about the relationship between happiness and expectation. He argued that satisfaction with ourselves does not require us to succeed in every endeavour. We are not always humiliated by failing; we are humiliated only if we first invest our pride and sense of worth in a given achievement and then do not reach it.

  Alain de Botton

  Pride, Expectations, Achievement

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• We envy only those whom we feel ourselves to be like; we envy only members of our reference group. There are few successes more unendurable than those of our close friends.

  Alain de Botton

  Envy, Groups, Close Friends

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• The mind may be reluctant to think properly when thinking is all it is supposed to do; the task can be as paralysing as having to tell a joke or mimic an accent on demand.

  Alain de Botton

  Thinking, Mind, Tasks

  Alain de Botton (2003). “The Art of Travel”, p.32, Penguin UK

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• In their different ways, art and philosophy help us, in Schopenhauer's words, to turn pain into knowledge.

  Alain de Botton

  Art, Pain, Philosophy

  Alain de Botton (2001). “The Consolations of Philosophy”, p.188, Penguin UK

  8 Copy quote

• It would scarcely be acceptable, for example, to ask in the course of an ordinary conversation what our society holds to be the purpose of work.

  Alain de Botton

  Ordinary, Example, Purpose

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

  5 Copy quote

• Writing a book has about it some of the anxiety of telling a joke and having to wait several years to know whether or not it was funny.

  Alain de Botton

  Book, Writing, Years

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• 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.

  Alain de Botton

  Meaningful, Real, Issues

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

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• The pre-scientific age, whatever its deficiencies, had at least offered its members the peace of mind that follows from knowing all man-made achievements to be nothing next to the grandeur of the universe. We, more blessed in our gadgetry but less humble in our outlook, have been left... having no more compelling repository of veneration than our brilliant, precise, blinkered and morally troubling fellow human beings.

  Alain de Botton

  Blessed, Humble, Men

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

  8 Copy quote

• Religions are so subtle, so complicated, so intelligent in many ways that they're not fit to be abandoned to the religious alone; they're for all of us.

  Alain de Botton

  God, Religious, Intelligent

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• Gaffe-focused journalism: revenge of intelligent people who know true evils are out there but lack the access/time to get to them.

  Alain de Botton

  Revenge, Intelligent, True Evil

  Twitter post from Sep 25, 2012

  5 Copy quote

• 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.

  Alain de Botton

  Ambition, Love Is, Missing

  Alain De Botton (2008). “The Art of Travel”, p.88, Vintage

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• It's very hard to respect people on holiday - everybody looks so silly at the beach, it makes you hate humanity - but when you see people at their work they elicit respect, whether it's a mechanic, a stonemason or an accountant.

  Alain de Botton

  Beach, Hate, Silly

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• I am conscious of trying to stretch the boundaries of non-fiction writing. It's always surprised me how little attention many non-fiction writers pay to the formal aspects of their work.

  Alain de Botton

  Writing, Trying, Attention

  9 Copy quote

• 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.'

  Alain de Botton

  Simple, Thinking, Expression

  "Alain de Botton: 'My father was physically quite violent... he would destroy the house'" by Robert Chalmers, www.independent.co.uk. March 25, 2012.

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• 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.

  Alain de Botton

  Book, Order, People

  8 Copy quote

• 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.

  Alain de Botton

  Believe, Mind, Needs

  "Atheism 2.0". TED conference, www.ted.com. July 2011.

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• Taking architecture seriously therefore makes some singular and strenuous demands upon us...It means conceding that we are inconveniently vulnerable to the colour of our wallpaper and that our sense of purpose may be derailed by an unfortunate bedspread

  Alain de Botton

  Mean, Purpose, Demand

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• Sublime places repeat in grand terms a lesson that ordinary life typically teaches viciously: that the universe is mightier than we are, that we are frail and temporary and have no alternative but to accept limitations on our will; that we must bow to necessities greater than ourselves.

  Alain de Botton

  Sublime, Bows, Ordinary

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• The study of maps and the perusal of travel books aroused in me a secret fascination that was at times almost irresistible.

  Alain de Botton

  Book, Secret, Fascination

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• Objectively good spaces to work rarely end up being so; in their faultlessness, quiet and well-equipped studios have a habit of rendering the fear of failure overwhelming. Original thoughts are like shy animals. We sometimes have to look the other way - towards a busy street or terminal - before they run out of their burrows.

  Alain de Botton

  Running, Animal, Space

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• Many moments in religion seem attractive to me even though I can't believe in any of it.

  Alain de Botton

  Believe, Moments, Attractive

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• Life gives us no such handy markers - a storm comes, and far from this being a harbinger of death and collapse, during its course a person discovers love and truth, beauty and happiness, the rain lashing at the windows all the while.

  Alain de Botton

  Rain, Giving, Storm

  Alain de Botton (2015). “On Love: A Novel”, p.119, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  5 Copy quote

• Much of the really serious trouble in the world gets going with a sense of humiliation.

  Alain de Botton

  World, Serious, Trouble

  Twitter post from Sep 13, 2013

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• The only possible way to begin a book is to tell oneself that its eventual failure is guaranteed — but survivable.

  Alain de Botton

  Book, Way, Oneself

  5 Copy quote

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