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There may be significant things to learn about people by looking at what annoys them most.

Alain de Botton

Work finally begins when the fear of doing nothing exceeds the fear of doing it badly.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Badly Begin Exceed Fear Finally Nothing
The mind does most of its best thinking when we aren’t there. The answers are there in the morning.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Answer Best Mind Morning Think
William James once made an acute point about the relationship between happiness and expectation. He argued that satisfaction with ourselves does not require us to succeed in every endeavour.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Acute Between Endeavour Expectation Happiness Made Point Relationship
to design means forcing ourselves to unlearn what we believe we already know, patiently to take apart the mechanisms behind our reflexes and to acknowledge the mystery and stupefying complexity of everyday gestures like switching off a light of turning on a tap
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Already Behaviour Design Force Mechanism Ourselves Patiently Unlearn
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
Our jobs make relentless calls on a narrow band of our faculties, reducing our chances of achieving rounded personalities and leaving us to suspect (often in the gathering darkness of a Sunday evening) that much of who we are, or could be, has gone unexplored.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Achieve Band Faculty Job Make Narrow Personality Reduce Change Relentless Round
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
Art holds out the promise of inner wholeness.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Art Hold Inner Promise Wholeness
Most victories are, in the best way, acts of revenge.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Act Best Most Revenge Victory Way
The greatest works of art speak to us without knowing us.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Greatest Speak Without Know Work
When I see someone like Richard Dawkins, I see my father. I grew up with that. I’m basically the child of Richard Dawkins.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Basically Child Father People See Someone
Out of the millions of people we live among, most of whom we habitually ignore and are ignored by in turn, there are always a few that hold hostage our capacity for happiness, whom we could recognize by their smell alone and whom we would rather die than be without.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Always Among Habitat Ignore Million People Turn
Rage is caused by a conviction, almost comic in its optimistic origins (however tragic in its effects), that a given frustration has not been written into the contract of life.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Almost Cause Comic Conviction Frustration Optimistic Origin Rage
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
When Proust urges us to evaluate the world properly, he repeatedly reminds us of the value of modest scenes.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Evaluate Modest Property Repeatedly Scene Urge Value World
Everyone returns us to a different sense of ourselves, for we become a little of who they think we are.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Different Everyone Ourselves Return Sense Think

There may be significant things to learn about people by looking at what annoys them most.

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There may be significant things to learn about people by looking at what annoys them most.

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