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Literature is the greatest reality simulator – a machine that puts you through infinitely more situations than you can ever directly witness.

Alain de Botton

He did not mean to depress us, rather to free us from expectations which inspire bitterness. It is consoling, when love has let us down, to hear that happiness was never part of the plan.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Bitterness Console Depress Expectation Inspire Love Happy Part Plan Rather
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
It is in dialogue with pain that many beautiful things acquire their value. Acquaintance with grief turns out to be one of the more unusual prerequisites of architectural appreciation. We might, quite aside from all other requirements, need to be a little sad before buildings can properly touch us.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Acquaintance Acquire Beautiful Dialogue Grief Pain Thing Turn More Value
As an atheist, I think there are lots of things religions get up to which are of value to non-believers – and one of those things is trying to be a bit better than we normally manage to be.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Atheist Believer Non Normal One Religion Thing Try Value
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
It was no longer her absence that wounded me, but my growing indifference to it. Forgetting, however calming, was also a reminder of infidelity to what I had at one time held so dear.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Absence Calm Forget Grow Identify Indifference Longer Reminder Time Wounded
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
Artistic accounts involve severe abbreviations of what reality will force upon us.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Abbreviation Account Artistic Force Involve Reality Serve
After 40 (old age for most of man’s history), one should strive to be more or less packed and ready to go were the end call to come.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Age End Less Man More Most Old Pack Should Strive
What kills us isn’t one big thing, but thousands of tiny obligations we can’t turn down for fear of disappointing others.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Disappoint Kill Obligation Other Thing Thousand
Kant and Hegel are interesting thinkers. But I am happy to insist that they are also terrible writers.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Happy Instant Interest Terrible Think Writer
We will cease to be angry once we cease to be so hopeful.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Angry Cease Hopeful Once
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
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
What am I supposed to do here? What am I supposed to think?
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Suppose Think
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

Literature is the greatest reality simulator – a machine that puts you through infinitely more situations than you can ever directly witness.

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Literature is the greatest reality simulator – a machine that puts you through infinitely more situations than you can ever directly witness.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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