Alain de Botton Quotes - Page 6

Quotes about:

• A danger of travel is that we see things at the wrong time, before we have had a chance to build up the necessary receptivity and when new information is therefore as useless and fugitive as necklace beads without a connecting chain.

  Alain de Botton

  Travel, Information, Useless

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• After 40 (old age for most of man's history), one should strive to be more or less packed and ready to go were the end call to come.

  Alain de Botton

  Men, Age, Strive

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• Memory is... similar to anticipation: an instrument of simplification and selection.

  Alain de Botton

  Memories, Anticipation, Instruments

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• Our minds are susceptible to the influence of external voices telling us what we require to be satisfied, voices that may drown out the faint sounds emitted by our souls and distract us from the careful, arduous task of accurately naming our priorities.

  Alain de Botton

  Voice, Priorities, Soul

  Alain De Botton (2008). “Status Anxiety”, p.190, Vintage

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• One of our major flaws, and causes of unhappiness, is that we find it hard to take note of appreciate and be grateful for what is always around us. We suffer because we lose sight of the value of what is before us and yearn, often unfairly, for the imagined attraction elsewhere.

  Alain de Botton

  Gratitude, Grateful, Sight

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• It is in dialogue with pain that many beautiful things acquire their value. Acquaintance with grief turns out to be one of the more unusual prerequisites of architectural appreciation. We might, quite aside from all other requirements, need to be a little sad before buildings can properly touch us.

  Alain de Botton

  Beautiful, Appreciation, Pain

  Alain de Botton (2007). “The Architecture of Happiness”, p.15, Penguin UK

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• Someone who has thought rationally and deeply about how the body works is likely to arrive at better ideas about how to be healthy than someone who has followed a hunch. Medicine presupposes a hierarchy between the confusion the layperson will be in about what is wrong with him, and the more accurate knowledge available to doctors reasoning logically. At the heart of Epicureanism is the thought that we are as bad at answering the question "What will make me happy?" as "What will make me healthy?" Our souls do not spell out their troubles.

  Alain de Botton

  Heart, Medicine, Doctors

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

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• Pegging your contentment to the overall state of the world rather than of your own life: the basis of morality, or a sort of madness?

  Alain de Botton

  Contentment, World, Morality

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• The most attractive are not those who allow us to kiss them at once [we soon feel ungrateful] or those who never allow us to kiss them [we soon forget them], but those who coyly lead us between the two extremes.

  Alain de Botton

  Kissing, Two, Ungrateful

  Alain De Botton (1993). “Essays in Love”

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• Curiosity takes ignorance seriously - and is confident enough to admit when it's in the dark. It is aware of not knowing. And then it sets out to do something about it.

  Alain de Botton

  Ignorance, Dark, Knowing

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• There are things that are not spoken about in polite society. Very quickly in most conversations you'll reach a moment where someone goes, 'Oh, that's a bit heavy,' or 'Eew, disgusting.' And literature is a place where that stuff goes; where people whisper to each other across books, the writer to the reader. I think that stops you feeling lonely – in the deeper sense, lonely.

  Alain de Botton

  Lonely, Book, Thinking

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• I am in general a very pessimistic person with an optimistic, day to day take on things. The bare facts of life are utterly terrifying. And yet, one can laugh. Indeed, one has to laugh precisely because of the darkness: the nervous laughter of the trenches.

  Alain de Botton

  Laughter, Optimistic, Laughing

  "Biography/Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• The good parent: someone who doesn't mind, for a time, being hated by their children.

  Alain de Botton

  Children, Parent, Mind

  Twitter post from Dec 11, 2013

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• Literature deeply stands opposed to the dominant value system-the one that rewards money and power. Writers are on the other side-they make us sympathetic to ideas and feelings that are of deep importance but can’t afford airtime in a commercialized, status-consciou s, and cynical world.

  Alain de Botton

  Ideas, Cynical, Feelings

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• Maturity: knowing where you're crazy, trying to warn others of the fact and striving to keep yourself under control.

  Alain de Botton

  Crazy, Maturity, Knowing

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• We study biology, physics, movements of glaciers... Where are the classes on envy, feeling wronged, despair, bitterness.

  Alain de Botton

  Class, Envy, Feelings

  Twitter post from Jan 05, 2013

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• That said, deciding to avoid other people does not necessarily equate with having no desire whatsoever for company; it may simply reflect a dissatisfaction with what—or who—is available. Cynics are, in the end, only idealists with awkwardly high standards. In Chamfort's words, 'It is sometimes said of a man who lives alone that he does not like society. This is like saying of a man that he does not like going for walks because he is not fond of walking at night in the forêt de Bondy.

  Alain de Botton

  Night, Men, People

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• One's doing well if age improves even slightly one's capacity to hold on to that vital truism: "This too shall pass.

  Alain de Botton

  Age, Aging, This Too Shall Pass

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

  Alain de Botton

  Intelligent, Insanity, Disease

  Alain de Botton (2015). “On Love: A Novel”, p.125, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• It's perhaps easier now than ever before to make a good living; it's perhaps harder than ever before to stay calm, to be free of career anxiety.

  Alain de Botton

  Motivation, Inspiration, Careers

  "A kinder, gentler philosophy of success". TED Talk, www.ted.com. July, 2009.

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• We each appear to hold within ourselves a range of divergent views as to our native qualities.. And amid such uncertainty, we typically turn to the wider world to settle the question of our significance.. we seem beholden to affections of others to endure ourselves.

  Alain de Botton

  Views, Quality, Divergent

  Alain De Botton (2008). “Status Anxiety”, p.9, Vintage

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• As victims of hurt, we frequently don't bring up what ails us, because so many wounds look absurd in the light of day.

  Alain de Botton

  Hurt, Light, Looks

  Alain de Botton (2012). “Religion for Atheists: A non-believer's guide to the uses of religion”, p.38, Penguin UK

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• There is a devilishly direct relationship between the significance of an idea and how nervous we become at the prospect of having to think about it.

  Alain de Botton

  Thinking, Ideas, Nervous

  Alain de Botton (2012). “Religion for Atheists: A non-believer's guide to the uses of religion”, p.188, Penguin UK

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• The blunt large questions become connected to smaller, apparently esoteric ones.

  Alain de Botton

  Esoteric, Blunt, Connected

  Alain de Botton (2003). “The Art of Travel”, p.67, Penguin UK

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• Unnatural to expect that learning to be happy should be any easier than, say, learning to play the violin or require any less practice.

  Alain de Botton

  Practice, Play, Violin

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