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Alain de Botton

Alain de Botton Quotes

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“[T]he unsympathetic assessments we make of others are usually the result of nothing more sinister than our habit of looking at them in the wrong way, through lenses clouded by distraction, exhaustion and fear, which blind us to the fact that they are really, despite a thousand differences, just altered versions of ourselves: fellow fragile, uncertain, flawed beings likewise craving love and in urgent need of forgiveness.”

WayNeedsFactsDifferencesResultsHabitThousandFellowsBlindVersionsDespiteDistractionFragileUncertainLensesCravingFlawedUrgentAlteredExhaustionAssessmentWrong WaySinisterCloudedUnsympathetic
Author:Alain de Botton
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“Philosophy, art, politics, religion and bohemia have never sought to do away entirely with the status hierarchy; they have attemptee, rather, to institute new kinds of hierarchies based on sets of values unrecognised by, and critical of, those of the majority.. They have provided us with persuasive and consoling reminders that there is more than one way of succeeding in life.”

WayKindArtPhilosophyValuesSucceedMajorityCriticalOne WayRemindersHierarchyInstitutePersuasiveConsolingSucceeding In LifeBohemia
Author:Alain de Botton
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“According to one influential wing of modern secular society there are few more disreputable fates than to end up being 'like everyone else' for 'everyone else' is a category that comprises the mediocre and the conformist, the boring and the suburban. The goal of all right-thinking people should be to mark themselves off from the crowd and 'stand out' in whatever way their talents allow.”

PeopleThinkingWayShouldEndsGoalFateModernTalentMarkWingsCrowdsBoringCategoriesSecularMediocreStanding OutInfluentialConformistSecular Society
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“.. 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.”

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“If cynicism and love lie at opposite ends of a spectrum, do we not sometimes fall in love in order to escape the debilitating cynicism to which we are prone? Is there not in every coup de foudre a certain willful exaggeration of the qualities of the beloved, an exaggeration which distracts us from our habitual pessimism and focuses our energies on someone in whom we can believe in a way we have never believed in ourselves?”

IfsWayBelieveEndsSometimesLyingCertainOrderFallEnergyQualityOppositesAnd LoveFalling In LoveBelovedPessimismCynicismSpectrumExaggerationHabitualCoupsLove Lies
Book:On Love: A Novel
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“Our sadness won’t be of the searing kind but more like a blend of joy and melancholy: joy at the perfection we see before us, melancholy at an awareness of how seldom we are sufficiently blessed to encounter anything of its kind. The flawless object throws into perspective the mediocrity that surrounds it. We are reminded of the way we would wish things always to be and of how incomplete our lives remain.”

WayKindJoyWishOur LivesSadnessAwarenessObjectsPerspectivePerfectionBlessedEncountersMelancholySurroundMediocrityIncompleteFlawless
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“Life seems to be a process of replacing one anxiety with another and substituting one desire for another--which is not to say that we should never strive to overcome any of our anxieties or fulfil any of our desires, but rather to suggest that we should perhaps build into our strivings an awareness of the way our goals promise us a respite and a resolution that they cannot, by definition, deliver.”

WayShouldSeemsDesireProcessGoalAwarenessPromiseAnxietyOvercomingStriveDefinitionsResolutionRespite
Book:Status Anxiety
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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.”

WayWellsLooksEndsSometimesRunningSpaceAnimalStreetsHabitQuietOriginalsBusyStudiosShyOverwhelmingFear Of FailureRenderingTerminalOriginal Thought
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“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.”

ThinkingWayGivingMightFatherTermMemoriesMy OwnPrayerBuildingTheoryGiving UpAtheistResistanceCertaintyUpsetMealsAbstractHeavenlyRitualAfterlifeJustificationContinuingRespectfulLiberatedManuscriptsPilgrimageResidentsShrines
Author:Alain de Botton
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