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Most of our childhood is stored not in photos, but in certain biscuits, lights of day, smells, textures of carpet.

Alain de Botton

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
Getting to the top has an unfortunate tendency to persuade people that the system is OK after all.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

After All Get OK People System Tendency Top Unfortunate
There is a devilishly direct relationship between the significance of an idea and how nervous we become at the prospect of having to think about it.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Devilishly Direct Idea Nervous Prospect Relationship Significance Think
The inability to live in the present lies in the fear of leaving the sheltered position of anticipation or memory, and so of admitting that this is the only life that one is ever likely (heavenly intervention aside) to live.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Admit Anticipation Fear Inability Leave Lie Memory Position Present Shelter
How generous was it to offer gifts to people one knew would never accept them?
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Accept Generous Gift never Offer People
As we write, so we build: to keep a record of what matters to us.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Built Matter Record Write
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
Because it’s bad enough not getting what you want, but it’s even worse to have an idea of what it is you want and find out at the end of the journey that it isn’t, in fact, what you wanted all along.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Along End Get Idea Want Wnough Worse
Rather than employing it as a supplement to active, conscious seeing, they used the medium as a substitute, paying less attention to the world than they had done previously, taking it on faith that photography automatically assured them possession of it.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Conscious Employing Less Medium Pay Rather Substitute Supplement Used
Once I began to consider everything as being of potential interest, objects released latent layers of value.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Began Consider Everything Interest Object Potential Release Value
True love is a lack of desire to check one’s smartphone in another’s presence.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Desire Lack Love Presence Smartphone
Sweetness is the opposite of machismo, which is everywhere-and I really don’t get on with machismo. I’m interested in sensitivity, and weakness, and fear, and anxiety, because I think that, at the end of the day, behind our masks, that’s what we are.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Everywhere Get Interest Kind Machine Machismo Opposite Really Sensitive Sweetness
The materialistic view of happiness of our age starkly revealed in our understanding of the word “luxury.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Age Happiness Luxury Materialistic Reveal Starkly Understanding
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
All tours are filled with humiliation. My publisher once hired a private jet to fly me to a venue where 1,000 people were waiting. It almost bankrupted him.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Fill Hire Humiliation People Private Publisher Tour Venue Wait
It is striking how much more seriously we are likely to be taken after we have been dead a few centuries.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Century Dead Like Serious Strike Taken

Most of our childhood is stored not in photos, but in certain biscuits, lights of day, smells, textures of carpet.

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Most of our childhood is stored not in photos, but in certain biscuits, lights of day, smells, textures of carpet.

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