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It is striking how much more seriously we are likely to be taken after we have been dead a few centuries.

Alain de Botton

It is not just nature that defies us. Human life is as overwhelming… If we spend time in it [the vast spaces of nature], they may help us to accept more graciously the great, unfathomable events that molest our lives and will inevitably return us to dust.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Defies Human Life Nature Overwhelms Space Spend Time
Intimacy is the capacity to be rather weird with someone – and finding that that’s ok with them.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Capacity Find Intimacy Rather Someone
Every adult life could be said to be defined by two great love stories: the story of our quest for sexual love and the story of our quest for love from the world.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Define Every Adult Great Love Quest Sexual Story
Those who divorce aren’t necessarily the most unhappy, just those neatly able to believe their misery is caused by one other person.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Belive Cause Divorce Most Neat Necessary Other Unhappy
The pleasure we derive from journeys is perhaps dependent more on the mindset with which we travel than on the destination we travel to.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Dependent Derive Destination Journey Mindset More Pleasure
We will cease to be angry once we cease to be so hopeful.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Angry Cease Hopeful Once
The challenge of modern relationships: how to prove more interesting than the other’s smartphone.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Challenge Interest Modern More Other Prove Relationship Smartphone
Which seems no less relevant in the secular realm than in the religious one-that we have within us a precious, childlike, vulnerable core which we should nourish and nurture on its turbulent journey through life.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Childlike Journey Life Nourish Precious Relevant Secular Seem Vulnerable
Philosophy had supplied Socrates with convictions in which he had been able to have rational, as opposed to hysterical, confidence when faced with disapproval.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Conviction Disapproval Face Oppose Philosophy Rational Supply
I went to church and couldn’t swallow it. The music was nice but I don’t belong there.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Belong Church Music Nice Swallow
Not everyone is worth listening to.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Everyone Listen Worth
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.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Argument Believe Count Critical Manner Passionate Present Success
We are presented with an unpleasant choice between either committing to peculiar concepts about immaterial deities or letting go entirely of a host of consoling, subtle or just charming rituals for which we struggle to find equivalents in secular society.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Demonic Present Secular Society Struggle Unpleasant Virtue
Journeys are the midwives of thought. Few places are more conducive to internal conversations than moving planes, ships or trains.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Conducive Conversation Few Internal Journey Mindwive Move Place Plane Ship Train
If we are inclined to forget how much there is in the world besides that which we anticipate, then works of art are perhaps a little to blame, for in them we find at work the same process of simplification or selection as in the imagination.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Anticipate Art Besides Forget Inclined Much Perhaps World
The best cure for one’s bad tendencies is to see them in action in another person.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Action Another Bad Best Cure Person Tendency

It is striking how much more seriously we are likely to be taken after we have been dead a few centuries.

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It is striking how much more seriously we are likely to be taken after we have been dead a few centuries.

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