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Alain de Botton Quotes - Page 8

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It was no longer her absence that wounded me, but my growing indifference to it. Forgetting, however calming, was also a reminder of infidelity to what I had at one time held so dear.

It was no longer her absence that wounded me, but my growing indifference to it. Forgetting, however calming, was also a reminder of infidelity to what I had at one time held so dear.

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

The materialistic view of happiness of our age starkly revealed in our understanding of the word "luxury.

Alain de Botton
Views, Luxury, Understanding

Most of us stand poised at the edge of brilliance, haunted by the knowledge of our proximity, yet still demonstrably on the wrong side of the line, our dealings with reality undermined by a range of minor yet critical psychological flaws (a little too much optimism, an unprocessed rebelliousness, a fatal impatience or sentimentality). We are like an exquisite high-speed aircraft which for lack of a tiny part is left stranded beside the runway, rendered slower than a tractor or bicycle.

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

Serious journalists often imagine society is adrift because people don't know certain things. Yet often, they know but just don't care. So the task of serious journalism isn't just to lay out truths. It is to make vital truths compelling to a big audience.

Alain de Botton
People, Tasks, Care

If one felt successful, there'd be so little incentive to be successful.

Alain de Botton
Successful, Incentives, Littles

Being funny should be an incidental byproduct of trying to get to something truthful, not a destination in itself.

Alain de Botton
Trying, Truthful, Should
Twitter post from Feb 02, 2013

You need a long hard day's work to reveal the logic of the craving for very bad tv and alcohol.

Alain de Botton
Long, Alcohol, Needs
Twitter post from Feb 06, 2014

No one is able to produce a great work of art without experience, nor achieve a worldly position immediately, nor be a great lover at the first attempt; and in the interval between initial failure and subsequent success, in the gap between who we wish one day to be and who we are at present, must come pain, anxiety, envy and humiliation. We suffer because we cannot spontaneously master the ingredients of fulfillment.

Alain de Botton
Art, Pain, Envy

When work is not going well, it's useful to remember that our identities stretch beyond what is on the business card, that we were people long before we became workers - and will continue to be human once we have put our tools down forever.

Alain de Botton
Long, People, Forever
AskMen Interview, www.askmen.com.

.. if you asked most people whether they believed in love or not, they’d probably say they didn’t. Yet that’s not necessarily what they truly think. It’s just the way they defend themselves against what they want. They believe in it, but pretend they don’t until they’re allowed to. Most people would throw away all their cynicism if they could. The majority just never gets the chance.

Alain de Botton
Believe, Thinking, People

The origins and travels of our purchases remain matters of indifference, although to the more imaginative at least a slight dampness at the bottom of a carton, or an obscure code printed along a computer cable, may hint at processes of manufacture and transport nobler and more mysterious, more worthy of wonder and study, than the very goods themselves.

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

The very act of drawing an object, however badly, swiftly takes the drawer from a woolly sense of what the object looks like to a precise awareness of its component parts and particularities.

Alain de Botton
Drawing, Looks, Awareness

Endeavoring to purchase something we think beautiful may in fact be the most unimaginative way of dealing with the longing it excites in us, just as trying to sleep with someone may be the bluntest response to a feeling of love.

Alain de Botton
Beautiful, Sleep, Thinking
Alain de Botton (2007). “The Architecture of Happiness”, p.73, Penguin UK

I never wavered in my certainty that God did not exist. I was simply liberated by the thought that there might be a way to engage with religion without having to subscribe to its supernatural content - a way, to put it in more abstract terms, to think about Fathers without upsetting my respectful memory of my own father. I recognized that my continuing resistance to theories of an afterlife or of heavenly residents was no justification for giving up on the music, buildings, prayers, rituals, feasts, shrines, pilgrimages, communal meals and illustrated manuscripts of the faiths.

Alain de Botton
Atheist, Giving Up, Memories
"Katie Antoniou interviews Alain de Botton on his new book 'Religion for Atheists'". Interview with Katie Antoniou, www.run-riot.com. January 24, 2012.

Booksellers are the most valuable destination for the lonely, given the numbers of books that were written because authors couldn't find anyone to talk to.

Alain de Botton
Lonely, Book, Being Alone
"The Consolations of Philosophy". Book by Alain de Botton (Chapter IV "Consolation For Inadequacy", p. 148), 2000.

What is a snob? A snob is anybody who takes a small part of you and uses that to come to a complete vision of who you are. That is snobbery.

Alain de Botton
Vision, Use, Snob
"What's A Kinder Way To Frame Success?". Interview with Guy Raz, www.npr.org. November 1, 2013.

All tours are filled with humiliation. My publisher once hired a private jet to fly me to a venue where 1,000 people were waiting. It almost bankrupted him.

Alain de Botton
People, Waiting, Humiliation

Why, then, if expensive things cannot bring us remarkable joy, are we so powerfully drawn to them?

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

The arrogance that says analysing the relationship between reasons and causes is more important than writing a philosophy of shyness or sadness or friendship drives me nuts. I can't accept that.

Alain de Botton
Philosophy, Writing, Sadness
"Alain de Botton: a life in writing". Interview with Stuart Jeffries, www.theguardian.com. January 20, 2012.

Our homes do not have to offer us permanent occupancy or store our clothes to merit the name. To speak of home in relation to a building is simply to recognise its harmony with our own prized internal song. Home can be an airport or a library, a garden or a motorway diner.

Alain de Botton
Song, Home, Garden
Alain de Botton (2007). “The Architecture of Happiness”, p.55, Penguin UK

It's hard loving those who don't much like themselves: "If you're so great, why would you think I'm so great.

Alain de Botton
Thinking, Self Hatred, Hard

It is perhaps when our lives are at their most problematic that we are likely to be most receptive to beautiful things.

Alain de Botton
Beautiful, Beautiful Things, Receptive

The universe is large and we are tiny, without the need for further religious superstructure. One can have so-called spiritual moments without belief in the spirit.

Alain de Botton
God, Spiritual, Religious

Wealth is not an absolute. It is relative to desire. Every time we yearn for something we cannot afford, we grow poorer, whatever our resources. And every time we feel satisfied with what we have, we can be counted as rich, however little we may actually possess.

Alain de Botton
Desire, May, Littles
Alain De Botton (2008). “Status Anxiety”, p.43, Vintage

The degree of sympathy we feel regarding another's fiasco is directly proportional to how easy or difficult it is for us to imagine ourselves, under like circumstances, making a similar mistake.

Alain de Botton
Mistake, Degrees, Imagine
Alain De Botton (2008). “Status Anxiety”, p.149, Vintage

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