Alain de Botton Quotes - Page 13

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• It should not be Illiers-Combray that we visit: a genuine homage to Proust would be to look at our world through his eyes, not look at his world through our eyes.

  Alain de Botton

  Eye, Our World, Would Be

  Alain de Botton (2012). “How Proust Can Change Your Life”, p.214, Pan Macmillan

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• Man seems merely dust postponed: the sublime as an encounter - pleasurable, intoxicating, even - with human weakness in the face of strength, age and size of the universe.

  Alain de Botton

  Men, Dust, Sublime

  Alain de Botton (2003). “The Art of Travel”, p.89, Penguin UK

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• Cynics are - beneath it all - only idealists with awkwardly high standards.

  Alain de Botton

  High Standards, Standards, Idealist

  Twitter post from Mar 14, 2015

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• Most victories are, in the best way, acts of revenge.

  Alain de Botton

  Revenge, Victory, Way

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• Differ though we might with Christianity's view of what precisely our souls need, it is hard to discredit the provocative underlying thesis, which seems no less relevant in the secular realm than in the religious one-that we have within us a precious, childlike, vulnerable core which we should nourish and nurture on its turbulent journey through life.

  Alain de Botton

  Religious, Atheist, Journey

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• What am I supposed to do here? What am I supposed to think?

  Alain de Botton

  Thinking

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• Journeys are the midwives of thought. Few places are more conducive to internal conversations than a moving plane, ship or train. There is an almost quaint correlation between what is in front of our eyes and the thoughts we are able to have in our heads: large thoughts at times requiring large views, new thoughts new places. Introspective reflections which are liable to stall are helped along by the flow of the landscape. The mind may be reluctant to think properly when thinking is all it is supposed to do.

  Alain de Botton

  Moving, Eye, Reflection

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

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• It is the most ambitious and driven among us who are the most sorely in need of having our reckless hopes dampened through immersive dousings in the darkness which religions have explored. This is a particular priority for secular Americans, perhaps the most anxious and disappointed people on earth, for their nation infuses them with the most extreme hopes about what they may be able to achieve in their working lives and relationships.

  Alain de Botton

  Atheist, People, Priorities

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• Only by declaring a book completely finished can one start to see how much remains to be done on it.

  Alain de Botton

  Book, Done, Remains

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• 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

  Alain de Botton

  Believe, Mean, Light

  Alain de Botton (2007). “The Architecture of Happiness”, p.121, Penguin UK

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• When Proust urges us to evaluate the world properly, he repeatedly reminds us of the value of modest scenes.

  Alain de Botton

  World, Proust, Scene

  Alain de Botton (2012). “How Proust Can Change Your Life”, p.164, Pan Macmillan

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• When I see someone like Richard Dawkins, I see my father. I grew up with that. I'm basically the child of Richard Dawkins.

  Alain de Botton

  Children, Father, Grew Up

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• The longing for destiny is nowhere stronger than in our romantic life.

  Alain de Botton

  Destiny, Stronger, Longing

  Alain de Botton (2015). “On Love: A Novel”, p.10, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• These inventors were elevating the formulation of entrepreneurial ideas to the status of a visionary activity. Though forced to justify their efforts in the pragmatic language of venture capital, they were at heart utopian thinkers intent on transforming the world.

  Alain de Botton

  Heart, Ideas, Effort

  "The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work". Book by Alain de Botton, 2009.

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• If we are inclined to forget how much there is in the world besides that which we anticipate, then works of art are perhaps a little to blame, for in them we find at work the same process of simplification or selection as in the imagination.

  Alain de Botton

  Art, Imagination, World

  Alain de Botton (2003). “The Art of Travel”, p.13, Penguin UK

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• The assumption is that life doesn't need to be navigated with lessons. You can just do it intuitively. After all, you only need to achieve autonomy from your parents, find a moderately satisfying job, form a relationship, perhaps raise some children, watch the onset of mortality in your parents' generation and eventually in your own, until one day a fatal illness starts gnawing at your innards and you calmly go to the grave, shut the coffin and are done with the self-evident business of life.

  Alain de Botton

  Jobs, Children, Self

  "In defence of self-help books" by Alain de Botton, www.theguardian.com. May 17, 2012.

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• We don't exist unless there is someone who can see us existing, what we say has no meaning until someone can understand, while to be surrounded by friends is constantly to have our identity confirmed; their knowledge and care for us have the power to pull us from our numbness. In small comments, many of them teasing, they reveal they know our foibles and except them and so, in turn, accept that we have a place in the world.

  Alain de Botton

  Numbness, Identity, World

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

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• Art cannot single-handedly create enthusiasm... it merely contributes to enthusiasm and guides us to be more conscious of feelings that we might previously have experienced only tentatively or hurriedly.

  Alain de Botton

  Art, Feelings, Might

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• Curiosity might be pictured as being made up of chains of small questions extending outwards, sometimes over huge distances, from a central hub composed of a few blunt, large questions.

  Alain de Botton

  Distance, Curiosity, Might

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• The company of certain people may excite our generosity and sensitivity, while that of others awakens our competitiveness and envy.

  Alain de Botton

  People, Generosity, Envy

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• Her lie was symptomatic of a certain pride she took in mocking the romantic, in being unsentimental, matter-of-fact, stoic; yet at heart she was the oppo site: idealistic, dreamy, giving, and deeply attached to everything she liked verbally to dismiss as "mushy.

  Alain de Botton

  Lying, Heart, Pride

  Alain de Botton (2006). “On Love: A Novel”, p.42, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• If the behaviour of babies and small children is any guide, we emerge into the world with our tendencies to imbalance already well entrenched. In our playpens and high chairs, we are rarely far from displaying either hysterical happiness or savage disappointment, love or rage, mania or exhaustion--and, despite the growth of a more temperate exterior in adulthood, we seldom succeed in laying claim to lasting equilibrium, traversing our lives like stubbornly listing ships on choppy seas.

  Alain de Botton

  Baby, Disappointment, Children

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• It's as though either you accept [religious] doctrine and then you can have all the nice stuff, or you reject the doctrine and you're living in some kind of spiritual wasteland under the guidance of CNN and Walmart.

  Alain de Botton

  God, Spiritual, Religious

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• Despite its maddeningly vague, inarticulate form, anxiety is almost always trying to tell you something useful and apposite.

  Alain de Botton

  Always Trying, Anxiety, Form

  Twitter post from Apr 22, 2013

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• The secular world is full of holes. We have secularized badly.

  Alain de Botton

  God, Soul, World

  "TED | Alain deBotton: Atheism 2.0 – Notes & Review". vialogue.wordpress.com. January 22, 2012.

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