Alain de Botton Quotes, Religious Quotes, Atheist Quotes

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.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Religious Quotes , Atheist Quotes

He was marked out by his relentless ability to find fault with others' mediocrity - suggesting that a certain type of intelligence may be at heart nothing more or less than a superior capacity for dissatisfaction.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Heart Quotes , Mediocrity Quotes

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.

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The fear of saying something stupid (which stupid people never have) has censored far more good ideas than bad ones.

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There are selections so acute that they come to define a place, with the result that we can no longer travel through that landscape without being reminded of what a great artist noticed there.

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People who go on to be writers are those who can forgive themselves the horror of the first draft.

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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.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Travel Quotes , Information Quotes

Status anxiety definitely exists at a political level. Many Iraqis were annoyed with the US essentially for reasons of status: for not showing them respect, for humiliating them.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Annoyed Quotes , Anxiety Quotes

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.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Night Quotes , Men Quotes

An understandable hunger for potential clients tempts many [career counseling therapists] to overpromise, like creative writing teachers who, out of greed or sentimentality, sometimes imply that all of their students could one day produce worthwhile literature, rather than frankly acknowledging the troubling truth, anathema to a democratic society, that the great writer, like the contented worker, remains an erratic and anomalous event, immune to the methods of factory farming.

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Teacher Quotes , Writing Quotes

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

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A great writer picks up on those things that matter. It’s almost like their radar is attuned to the most significant moments.

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It is no coincidence that the Western attraction to sublime landscapes developed at precisely the moment when traditional beliefs in God began to wane.

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So many complaints boil down to the belly ache of the fragile, mortal, ignored ego in a vast and indifferent universe.

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Many moments in religion seem attractive to me even though I can't believe in any of it.

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I know a lot about writing, but I don't know much about how other industries work. I've tried to use my naivety to my advantage.

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Without sex, we would be dangerously invulnerable. We might believe we were not ridiculous. We wouldn't know rejection and humiliation so intimately.

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Art holds out the promise of inner wholeness.

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True respectability stems not from the will of the majority but from proper reasoning.

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

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Careers Quotes , Two Quotes