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The arrogance that says analysing the relationship between reasons and causes is more important than writing a philosophy of shyness or sadness or friendship drives me nuts. I can’t accept that.

Alain de Botton

What am I supposed to do here? What am I supposed to think?
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Suppose Think
Most victories are, in the best way, acts of revenge.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Act Best Most Revenge Victory Way
Not being understood may be taken as a sign that there is much in one to understand.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Mauch Sign Taken Understand Understood
Only by declaring a book completely finished can one start to see how much remains to be done on it.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Book Completely Declare Done Finish Car Remain Start
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
Paying tax should be framed as a glorious civic duty worthy of gratitude – not a punishment for making money.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Civic Duty Frame Glorious Gratitude Make Money Pay Punishment Tax Worthy
We are not always humiliated by failing; we are humiliated only if we first invest our pride and sense of worth in a given achievement and then do not reach it.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Achievement Always Fall First Humiliate Invest Price Sense Worth
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
The dream of the news is that it makes us care about other people and situations. But we cannot identify with people to whom we haven’t been introduced. Humans will only respond to art, to people who are skilled in making you care.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Art Care Dream False Idea Identify Make News People
What I want to argue for is not that we should give up on our ideas of success, but that we should make sure that they are our own. We should focus in on our ideas and make sure that we own them, that we’re truly the authors of our own ambitions.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Ambition Argue Author Focus Idea Make Own Success Sure Want
Bitterness: anger that forgot where it came from.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Anger Bitterness Came Forget
In the gap between who we wish one day to be and who we are at present, must come pain, anxiety, envy and humiliation.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Anxiety Between Day Gap Humiliation One Present Wish
You have to be quite heavily invested in someone to do them the honour of telling them you’re annoyed with them.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Annoy Heavily Honor Invest Quite Someone Tell
Travel agents would be wiser to ask us what we hope to change about our lives rather than simply where we wish to go.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Agent Ask Change Hope Simply Travel Wiser Wish
What should worry us is not the number of people that oppose us, but how good their reasons are for doing so.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Good Number Oppose People Reason Worry
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 arrogance that says analysing the relationship between reasons and causes is more important than writing a philosophy of shyness or sadness or friendship drives me nuts. I can’t accept that.

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The arrogance that says analysing the relationship between reasons and causes is more important than writing a philosophy of shyness or sadness or friendship drives me nuts. I can’t accept that.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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