Alain de Botton Quotes - Page 5

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• I think people want to get married to end their emotional uncertainty. In a way, they want to end powerful feelings, or certainly the negative ones.

  Alain de Botton

  Powerful, Emotional, Thinking

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

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• Travel agents would be wiser to ask us what we hope to change about our lives rather than simply where we wish to go.

  Alain de Botton

  Wish, Agents, Would Be

  Twitter post from Oct 21, 2010

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• The media insists on taking what someone didn't mean to say as being far closer to the truth than what they did.

  Alain de Botton

  Mean, Media

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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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• Those who divorce aren't necessarily the most unhappy, just those neatly able to believe their misery is caused by one other person.

  Alain de Botton

  Believe, Divorce, Unhappy

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• Kant and Hegel are interesting thinkers. But I am happy to insist that they are also terrible writers.

  Alain de Botton

  Interesting, Hegel, Terrible

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• The genius of religions is that they structure the inner life.

  Alain de Botton

  Genius, Structure, Inner Life

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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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• Although I don't believe in God, Bach's music shows me what a love of God must feel like.

  Alain de Botton

  Believe, God Love, Bach's Music

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• Love is an incurable disease. In love, there is permanent suffering. Those who love and those who are happy are not the same.

  Alain de Botton

  Love Is, Suffering, Disease

  Alain de Botton (2012). “How Proust Can Change Your Life”, p.59, Pan Macmillan

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• In the oasis complex, the thirsty man images he sees water, palm trees, and shade not because he has evidence for the belief, but because he has a need for it. Desperate needs bring about a hallucination of their solution: thirst hallucinates water, the need for love hallucinates a prince or princess. The oasis complex is never a complete delusion: the man in the desert does see something on the horizon. It is just that the palms have withered, the well is dry, and the place is infected with locusts.

  Alain de Botton

  Love, Princess, Men

  Alain de Botton (2015). “On Love: A Novel”, p.52, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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

  Alain de Botton

  People, Tendencies, Unfortunate

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• Every adult life could be said to be defined by two great love stories: the story of our quest for sexual love and the story of our quest for love from the world.

  Alain de Botton

  Love, Two, Adults

  Alain De Botton (2008). “Status Anxiety”, p.5, Vintage

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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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• Most of our childhood is stored not in photos, but in certain biscuits, lights of day, smells, textures of carpet.

  Alain de Botton

  Light, Smell, Childhood

  Twitter post from Jun 13, 2014

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• We accept the need to train extensively to fly a plane; but think instinct should be enough for marrying and raising kids.

  Alain de Botton

  Kids, Thinking, Needs

  Twitter post from Apr 28, 2013

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• Choosing a spouse and a choosing career: the two great decisions for which society refuses to set up institutional guidance.

  Alain de Botton

  Careers, Two, Decision

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• Social media has lots of benefits, but compared to Christianity, it tends to group people by interests. Religion puts you with people who have nothing in common except that you're human.

  Alain de Botton

  Media, People, Benefits

  "Alain de Botton: a life in writing" by Stuart Jeffries, www.theguardian.com. January 20, 2012.

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• People who hold important positions in society are commonly labelled "somebodies," and their inverse "nobodies"-both of which are, of course, nonsensical descriptors, for we are all, by necessity, individuals with distinct identities and comparable claims on existence. Such words are nevertheless an apt vehicle for conveying the disparate treatment accorded to different groups. Those without status are all but invisible: they are treated brusquely by others, their complexities trampled upon and their singularities ignored.

  Alain de Botton

  People, Important, Identity

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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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• Bitterness: anger that forgot where it came from.

  Alain de Botton

  Bitterness

  Twitter post from Jun 13, 2014

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• The happiness that may emerge from taking a second look is central to Proust's therapeutic conception. It reveals the extent to which our dissatisfactions may be the result of failing to look properly at our lives rather than the result of anything inherently deficient about them.

  Alain de Botton

  Looks, May, Proust

  Alain de Botton (2012). “How Proust Can Change Your Life”, p.153, Pan Macmillan

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• An argument in a couple: 2 people attempting to introduce each other to important truths - by panicked shouting.

  Alain de Botton

  Couple, People, Important

  Twitter post from May 13, 2013

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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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• There is real danger of a disconnect between what's on your business card and who you are deep inside, and it's not a disconnect that the world is ready to be patient with.

  Alain de Botton

  Real, Cards, World

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