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Though it may feel otherwise, enjoying life is no more dangerous than apprehending it with continuous anxiety and gloom.

Alain de Botton

Our capacity to draw happiness from aesthetic objects or material goods in fact seems critically dependent on our first satisfying a more important range of emotional or psychological needs, among them the need for understanding, for love, expression and respect.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Aesthetic Capacity Critical Draw Good Happiness Material Object Satisfy Seem
Our sadness won’t be of the searing kind but more like a blend of joy and melancholy: joy at the perfection we see before us, melancholy at an awareness of how seldom we are sufficiently blessed to encounter anything of its kind.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Before Blend Define Joy Melancholy Perfection Sadness Sear
Although I don’t believe in God, Bach’s music shows me what a love of God must feel like.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Believe Feel God Love Music Must Show
Rage is caused by a conviction, almost comic in its optimistic origins (however tragic in its effects), that a given frustration has not been written into the contract of life.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Almost Cause Comic Conviction Frustration Optimistic Origin Rage
What is a snob? A snob is anybody who takes a small part of you and uses that to come to a complete vision of who you are. That is snobbery.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Anybody Complete Part Small Snob Take Use Vision
One of the better guarantors of ending up in a good relationship: an advanced capacity to be alone.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Advance Alone Better Capacity End Good Guarantor One Relationship
We envy only those whom we feel ourselves to be like; we envy only members of our reference group. There are few successes more unendurable than those of our close friends.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Close Envy Feel Friend Group Member Ourselves Reference
The greatest difficulty of Travel is that one is forced to take oneself along.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Along Difficult Force Greatest Oneself Travel
In the oasis complex, the thirsty man images he sees water, palm trees, and shade not because he has evidence for the belief, but because he has a need for it. Desperate needs bring about a hallucination of their solution: thirst hallucinates water.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Belief Complex Evidence Man Oasis Palm Thirsty Tree Water
It’s perhaps easier now than ever before to make a good living; it’s perhaps harder than ever before to stay calm, to be free of career anxiety.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Before Bore Calm Easier Even Good Live Make Perhaps Stay
Politics is so difficult, it’s generally only people who aren’t quite up to the task who feel convinced they are.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Convince Difficult Feel Generally Only People Politics Quite Task
What am I supposed to do here? What am I supposed to think?
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Suppose Think
Cynics are – beneath it all – only idealists with awkwardly high standards.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Awkward Beneath Cynic High Idealist Standard
Being content is perhaps no less easy than playing the violin well: and requires no less practice.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Content Less Perhaps Play Practice Require Well
Reputation matters so much only because people so seldom think for themselves.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Matter Much Only People Reputation Seldom Themselves
Insomnia is a glamorous term for thoughts you forgot to have in the day.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Dance Forgot Glamorous Insomnia Term Thought

Though it may feel otherwise, enjoying life is no more dangerous than apprehending it with continuous anxiety and gloom.

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Though it may feel otherwise, enjoying life is no more dangerous than apprehending it with continuous anxiety and gloom.

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