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"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."
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"Materialistic perception of life makes us spiritually shortsighted."

"Beauty is only there when you have the ability to see and appreciate it."

"Close your eyes to see the world with your imaginative mind."

"Light wears out the eyes but does not wear out the soul."

"What other people think is important to them. What you think has great importance to you."

"Maya (deceit) means that one cannot see the nature of things as they are but sees them in a different form."

"We each project to others a reflection of the world which includes our choices of perception."

"If your life is founded on what you can see then your success will be insignificant and very brief."

"We do not actually know other nations, we only know our judgements."

"The essential Not-self could be perceived very clearly in things and in livingcreatures on the hither side of good and evil. In human beings it was visible only when they were inrepose, their minds untroubled, their bodies motionless."
Explore more quotes by Alain de Botton

"We never envy another's achievement more than when we know very little about how it was attained."

"We are properly ready for marriage when we are strong enough to embrace a life of frustration."

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

"Instead of bringing back 1600 plants, we might return from our journeys with a collection of small unfAated but life-enhancing thoughts."

"He was a volatile mixture of confidence and vulnerability. He could deliver extended monologues on professional matters, then promptly stop in his tracks to peer inquisitively into his guest's eyes for signs of boredom or mockery, being intelligent enough to be unable fully to believe in his own claims to significance. He might, in a past life, have been a particularly canny and sharp-tongued royal advisor."

"What we seek, at the deepest level, is inwardly to resemble, rather than physically to possess, the objects and places that touch us through their beauty."

"A dominant impulse on encountering beauty is to wish to hold on to it, to possess it and give it weight in one's life. There is an urge to say, 'I was here, I saw this and it mattered to me."

"Paying tax should be framed as a glorious civic duty worthy of gratitude - not a punishment for making money."

"Blessed with riches and possibilities far beyond anything imagined by ancestors who tilled the unpredictable soil of medieval Europe, modern populations have nonetheless shown a remarkable capacity to feel that neither who they are nor what they have is quite enough."

"Journeys are the midwives of thought. Few places are more conducive to internal conversations than moving planes, ships or trains."
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