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The blunt large questions become connected to smaller, apparently esoteric ones.

Alain de Botton

There are selections so acute that they come to define a place, with the result that we can no longer travel through that landscape without being reminded of what a great artist noticed there.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Acute Come Define Landscape Longer Place Result Selection Travel
Endeavoring to purchase something we think beautiful may in fact be the most unimaginative way of dealing with the longing it excites in us, just as trying to sleep with someone may be the bluntest response to a feeling of love.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Beautiful Deal Endeavor Feeling Long Love Purchase Response Something Think Way
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
Every realistic picture represents a choice as to which features of reality should be given prominence; no painting ever captures the whole.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Capture Choice Every Realistic Feature Given Paint Picture Prominence Reality Represent
We read the weird tales in newspapers to crowd out the even weirder stuff inside us.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Crowd Inside Newspaper Raed Stuff Tale Weird
It seems that most of us could benefit from a brush with a near-fatal disaster to help us recognise the important things that we are too defeated or embittered to recognise from day to day.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Benefit Brush Disaster Fatal Help Important Recognise Seem Thing
As victims of hurt, we frequently don’t bring up what ails us, because so many wounds look absurd in the light of day.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Absurd Ail Bring Day Frequent Hurt Light Look Victim Wound
The only way to be happy is to realise how much depends on how you look at things
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Depend Happy Look Only Realise Thing Way
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
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
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
Curiosity might be pictured as being made up of chains of small questions extending outwards, sometimes over huge distances, from a central hub composed of a few blunt, large questions.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Curiosity Distance Extend Huge Outward Picture Question Small Some Time
Curiosity takes ignorance seriously – and is confident enough to admit when it’s in the dark. It is aware of not knowing. And then it sets out to do something about it.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Admit Confident Curious Dark Ignorance Know Take
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
An argument in a couple: 2 people attempting to introduce each other to important truths – by panicked shouting.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Argument Attempt Couple Important Introduce Truth
A ‘good job’ can be both practically attractive while still not good enough to devote your entire life to.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Devote Enough Entire Good Job Life Practically

The blunt large questions become connected to smaller, apparently esoteric ones.

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The blunt large questions become connected to smaller, apparently esoteric ones.

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