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"Work begins when the fear of doing nothing at all finally trumps the terror of doing it badly."
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"I can choose either to be a victim of the world or an adventurer in search of treasure. It's all a question of how I view my life."

"Why is there never enough time to pursue my dreams? Yet, I have time to browse memes, laugh at cats doing silly things, and stare off into the distance. My dream is to do what I love and yet I still don't pursue that dream. When we fear failure we allow ourselves to fail every day by not pursuing our dreams."

"When you surround yourself with dramatic people, your life will be driven by drama instead of destiny."

"Freedom is not something that anybody can be given. Freedom is something people take, and people are as free as they want to be."

"When you're at the end of your rope, tie a knot and hold on."

"Things are always given to us when we need them (Acheron)." "That's so not true," Wulf said. "Actually it is. You just have to decide if you're strong enough, brave enough, to seize it and make ityours (Acheron)."

"You can create sense out of nonsense, something out of nothing. You can create wealth out of dearth, viable ventures out of turbulent adventures. You can create mercies out of miseries. You can create tomorrow's peace out of today's crisis."

"There is no path to the future, Fitz. The path is now. Now is all there is, or ever will be. You can change perhaps the next breaths in your life. But after that, random chance seizes you in its jaws again. A tree falls on you, a spider bites your ankle, and all your grand plans for winning a battle are for naught. Now is what we have, Fitz, and now is where we act to stay alive."

"There's sometimes a tugging feeling you get to push further when you aren't being challenged enough or when things get too comfortable."

"If you have strength, why won't you work?"
Explore more quotes by Alain de Botton

"[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."

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

"Feeling lost, crazy and desperate belongs to a good life as much as optimism, certainty and reason."

"Humboldt's early biographer, F.A. Schwarzenberg, subtitled his life of Humboldt What May Be Accomplished in a Lifetime. He summarised the areas of his subject's extraordinary curiosity as follows: '1) The knowledge of the Earth and its inhabitants. 2) The discovery of the higher laws of nature, which govern the universe, men, animals, plants, minerals. 3) The discovery of new forms of life. 4) The discovery of territories hitherto but imperfectly known, and their various productions. 5)The acquaintance with new species of the human race--- their manners, their language and the historical traces of their culture.' What may be accomplished in a lifetime---and seldom or never is."

"We don't need to be constantly reasonable in order to have good relationships; all we need to have mastered is the occasional capacity to acknowledge with good grace that we may, in one or two areas, be somewhat insane."

"It is difficult when reading the description of certain fictional characters not at the same time to imagine the real-life acquaintances who they most closely, if often unexpectedly, resemble."

"My dad was a slightly stricter version of Richard Dawkins. The worldview was that there are idiots out there who believe in Santa Claus and fairies and magic and elves, and we're not joining that nonsense."

"We are tempted to believe that certain achievements and possessions will give us enduring satisfaction. We are invited to imagine ourselves scaling the steep cliff face of happiness in order to reach a wide, high plateau on which we will live out the rest of our lives; we are not reminded that soon after gaining the summit, we will be called down again into fresh lowlands of anxiety and desire."
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