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Most of us still caged within careers chosen for us by our not entirely worldly 18-22 year old selves.

Alain de Botton

It looks like it’s wasting time, but literature is actually the ultimate time-saver – because it gives us access to a range of emotions and events that it would take you years, decades, millennia to try to experience directly.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Access Emotion Like Literature Look Range Saver Time Ultimate Waste
Work is most fulfilling when you’re at the comfortable, exciting edge of not quite knowing what you are doing.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Comfortable Do Edge Excite Fulfill Quite Work
We need a home in the psychological sense as much as we need one in the physical: to compensate for a vulnerability.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Compensate Home Much Need Physical Psychological Vulnerability
We need a refuge to shore up our states of mind, because so much of the world is opposed to our allegiances. We need our rooms to align us to desirable versions of ourselves and to keep alive the important, evanescent sides of us.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Allegiance Desirable Important Mind Need Oppose Shore Site State Version World
Taking photographs can assuage the itch for possession sparked by the beauty of a place; our anxiety over losing a precious scene can decline with every click of the shutter.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Anxiety Assuage Beauty Lose Photograph Place Possession Precious Sparkle Take
At the heart of every frustration lies a basic structure: the collision of a wish with an unyielding reality.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Basic Collision Every Frustration Heart Structure
The attentions of others matter to us because we are afflicted by a congenital uncertainty as to our own value, as a result of which affliction we tend to allow others’ appraisals to play a determining role in how we see ourselves. Our sense of identity is held captive by the judgements of those we live among.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Affiche Appraisal Attention Congenital Determine Matter People Uncertainty
Only as we mature does affection begin to depend on achievement.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Achievement Affection Begin Depend Mature
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
To be shown love is to feel ourselves the object of concern: our presence is noted, our name is registered, our views are listened to, our failings are treated with indulgence and our needs are ministered to. And under such care, we flourish.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Concern Flourish Listen Love Note Object Ourselves Presence Register Shown View
Most anger stems from feelings of weakness, sadness and fear: hard to remember when one is at the receiving end of its defiant roar.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Anger End Fear Feel Most Receive Remember Weakness
Unhappiness can stem from having only one perspective to play with.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Have Perspective Play Stem Unhappiness
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
So many complaints boil down to the belly ache of the fragile, mortal, ignored ego in a vast and indifferent universe.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Ache Belly Complaint Down Ego Fragile Ignore Universe
One rarely falls in love without being as much attracted to what is interestingly wrong with someone as what is objectively healthy.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Attract Fall Healthy Interest Object Rare Someone
Don’t despair: despair suggests you are in total control and know what is coming. You don’t – surrender to events with hope.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Come Control Despair Hope Suggest Surrender Total

Most of us still caged within careers chosen for us by our not entirely worldly 18-22 year old selves.

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Most of us still caged within careers chosen for us by our not entirely worldly 18-22 year old selves.

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