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"The largest part of what we call 'personality' is determined by how we've opted to defend ourselves against anxiety and sadness"."
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"My heart broke and my mind opened, tragedy works in a funny way like that ~ what once tore me apart was actually what was setting my truth free."

"Day or night, good or bad, all things from within."

"We are who we are because of what we learn and what we remember."

"If we let the drama of others' lives become our own, then we are no longer ourselves. We become the reflections of others' dramas and their lives, their tragedies, and their misfortunes become our own."

"I've always felt that the best whips and chains are in the mind. With a little creativity, the physical ones are hardly necessary."

"I don't need psychologyI am not a sociopathNeither and Psychopath."

"Do not focus on your failings, for you will only encourage them. If you keep beating yourself up on the head over these, you will only reinforce them."

"You must give permission for people to alter your thoughts. No matter how hard they knock, they can't get into your brain unless you open the door."

"When we hold-on to someone's imperfections we become emotionally pair-bonded to their maladies."
Explore more quotes by Alain de Botton

"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."

"A fundamental truth, is that there is simply no such thing as an inherently boring person or thing. People are only in danger of coming across as such when they either fail to understand their deeper selves or don't dare or know how to communicate them to others."

"Booksellers are the most valuable destination for the lonely, given the numbers of books that were written because authors couldn't find anyone to talk to."

"We are certainly influenced by role models, and if we are surrounded by images of beautiful rich people, we will start to think that to be beautiful and rich is very important - just as in the Middle Ages, people were surrounded by images of religious piety."

"If we were entirely sane, if madness did not have a serious grip on one side of us, other people's tragedies would hold a great deal less interest for us."

"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."

"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."

"The mind does most of its best thinking when we aren't there. The answers are there in the morning."

"Everyone endeavours to eliminate through the other individual his own weaknesses, defects, and deviations from the type, lest they be perpetuated or even grow into complete abnormalities in the child which will be produced."
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