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We should read other people’s books in order to learn what we feel; it is our own thoughts we should be developing, even if it is another writer’s thought that help us to do so.

Alain de Botton

What is a snob? A snob is anybody who takes a small part of you and uses that to come to a complete vision of who you are. That is snobbery.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Anybody Complete Part Small Snob Take Use Vision
Reputation matters so much only because people so seldom think for themselves.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Matter Much Only People Reputation Seldom Themselves
Because the rhythm of conversation makes no allowance for dead periods, because the presence of others calls for continuous responses, we are left to regret the inanity of what we say, and the missed opportunity of what we do not.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Allow Call Continuous Conversation Dead Make Misuse Opportunity Period Presence Rhythm
Anyone who isn’t embarrassed of who they were last year probably isn’t learning enough.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Anyone Embarrass Enough Larn Last Live Probably
Social media has lots of benefits, but compared to Christianity, it tends to group people by interests. Religion puts you with people who have nothing in common except that you’re human.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Benefit Community Compare Interest Media Religious Social
It’s perhaps easier now than ever before to make a good living; it’s perhaps harder than ever before to stay calm, to be free of career anxiety.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Before Bore Calm Easier Even Good Live Make Perhaps Stay
If one felt successful, there’d be so little incentive to be successful.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Felt Incentive Successful
One of our major flaws, and causes of unhappiness, is that we find it hard to take note of appreciate and be grateful for what is always around us. We suffer because we lose sight of the value of what is before us and yearn, often unfairly, for the imagined attraction elsewhere.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Appreciate Cause Flaw Grateful Major Unhappiness
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
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
The more closely we analyze what we consider ‘sexy,’ the more clearly we will understand that eroticism is the feeling of excitement we experience at finding another human being who shares our values and our sense of the meaning of existence.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Analyze Clearly Closely Consider Eroticism Excitement Feel More Understand
The mind may be reluctant to think properly when thinking is all it is supposed to do; the task can be as paralysing as having to tell a joke or mimic an accent on demand.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Mimic Mind Paralyse Properly Recusant Suppose Think
The moment we cry in a film is not when things are sad but when they turn out to be more beautiful than we expected them to be.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Beautiful Cry Expect Film Moment More Thing
…if the beginnings of love and amorous politics are equally rosy, then the ends may be equally bloody.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Amorous Beginning Bloody End Equally Love Politics
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
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

We should read other people’s books in order to learn what we feel; it is our own thoughts we should be developing, even if it is another writer’s thought that help us to do so.

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We should read other people’s books in order to learn what we feel; it is our own thoughts we should be developing, even if it is another writer’s thought that help us to do so.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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