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One of the best protections against disappointment is to have a lot going on.

Alain de Botton

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.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Acute Come Define Landscape Longer Place Result Selection Travel
Bad art might be defined as a series of bad choices about what to show and what to leave out.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Bad Choice Define Leave might Out Series Show
We study biology, physics, movements of glaciers… Where are the classes on envy, feeling wronged, despair, bitterness.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Biology Bitterness Class Envy Feeling Glacier Movement Physics Wrong
We should read other people’s books in order to learn what we feel; it is our own thoughts we should be developing, even if it is another writer’s thought that help us to do so.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Book Help Hope Order Other People Reckless
If our lives are dominated by a search for happiness, then perhaps few activities reveal as much about the dynamics of this quest – in all its ardour and paradoxes – than our travels.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Activity Dominate Dynamic Few Happiness Live Paradox Perhaps Quest Search
Our disrespect for thinking: someone sitting in a chair, gazing out of a window blankly, always described as ‘doing nothing’.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Blankly Chair Describe Disrespect Doing Gaze Nothing Sit Someone Think Window
One kind of good book should leave you asking: how did the author know that about me?
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Ask Author Book Kind Know Leave One
The very act of drawing an object, however badly, swiftly takes the drawer from a woolly sense of what the object looks like to a precise awareness of its component parts and particularities.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Act Draw Drawer Like Look Object Sense Swiftly
Unhappiness can stem from having only one perspective to play with.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Have Perspective Play Stem Unhappiness
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.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Build Chain Change Connect Danger Information Necessary Receptivity See Thing Travel
The challenge for a human now is to be more interesting to another than his or her smartphone.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Challenge Human Interest More Now Smartphone
A ‘good job’ can be both practically attractive while still not good enough to devote your entire life to.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Devote Enough Entire Good Job Life Practically
Bitterness: anger that forgot where it came from.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Anger Bitterness Came Forget
He did not mean to depress us, rather to free us from expectations which inspire bitterness. It is consoling, when love has let us down, to hear that happiness was never part of the plan.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Bitterness Console Depress Expectation Inspire Love Happy Part Plan Rather
It’s hard loving those who don’t much like themselves: “If you’re so great, why would you think I’m so great.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Great Hate Live Long Themselves
There’s a whole category of people who miss out by not allowing themselves to be weird enough.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Allow Category Enough Help People Themselves Weird Whole

One of the best protections against disappointment is to have a lot going on.

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One of the best protections against disappointment is to have a lot going on.

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