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Exlpore more Instinct quotes
"The very essence of instinct is that it's followed independently of reason."
"One of the things that I loved about listening to Miles Davis is that Miles always had an instinct for which musicians were great for what situations. He could always pick a band, and that was the thing that separated him from everybody else."
"When instinct speaks, listen to it. It might be the next push you need to reach greater heights."
"A man falling off a cliff to certain death will stretch out a hand even to his worst enemy."
"Surely we have always acted; it is an instinct inherent in all of us. Some of us are better at it than others, but we all do it."
"There must be instinct on d inside to have an increase on d outside."
"Their every instinct - and I have to say this is without exception - is to iron out the bumps, and It's always the bumps that are the most interesting stuff."
Explore more quotes by Alain de Botton
"In Britain, because I live here, I can also run into problems of envy and competition. But all this is just in a day's work for a writer. You can't put stuff out there without someone calling you a complete fool. Oh, well."
"I passionately believe that's it's not just what you say that counts, it's also how you say it - that the success of your argument critically depends on your manner of presenting it."
"We may seek a fortune for no greater reason than to secure the respect and attention of people who would otherwise look straight through us."
"It is according to how we are able to answer the question of what we do (normally the first enquiry we will have to field in any new acquaintance) that the quality of our reception is likely to be decided."
"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."
"Loneliness makes us more capable of true intimacy if ever better opportunities do come along. We might be isolated for now, but we'll be capable of far closer, more interesting bonds with anyone we do eventually locate."
"There is something improbably about the silence in the [subway] carriage, considering how naturally gregarious we are as a species. Still, how much kinder it is for the commuters to pretend to be absorbed in other things, rather than revealing the extent to which they are covertly evaluating, judging, condemning and desiring each other. A few venture a glance here and there, as furtively as birds pecking grain. But only if the train crashed would anyone know for sure who else had been in the carriage, what small parts of the nation's economy had been innocuously seated across the aisle just before the impact: employees of hotels, government ministries, plastic-surgery clinics, fruit nurseries and greetings-card companies."
"Our minds are susceptible to the influence of external voices telling us what we require to be satisfied, voices that may drown out the faint sounds emitted by our souls and distract us from the careful, arduous task of accurately naming our priorities."
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