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

Alain de Botton

The good parent: someone who doesn’t mind, for a time, being hated by their children.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Children Good Hate Mind Parent Someone Time
…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
We need objects to remind us of the commitments we’ve made. That carpet from Morocco reminds us of the impulsive, freedom-loving side of ourselves we’re in danger of losing touch with. Beautiful furniture gives us something to live up to. All designed objects are propaganda for a way of life.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Carpet Commitment Freedom Impulsive Need Object Remind
Yet often, they know but just don’t care. So the task of serious journalism isn’t just to lay out truths. It is to make vital truths compelling to a big audience.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Audience Big Compell Truth Vital
It wasn’t only fanatics and drunkards who began conversations with strangers in public.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Began Conversation Drunkard Fall Humiliate Public Stranger
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
One of the unexpectedly important things that art can do for us is to teach us how to suffer more successfully.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Important One Successful Suffer Teach Thing Unexpectedly
One kind of good book should leave you asking: how did the author know that about me?
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Ask Author Book Kind Know Leave One
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
A notorious inability to express emotions makes human beings the only animals capable of suicide.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Animal Capable Emotion Express Human Inability Notorious Suicide Time
Intuition is unconscious accumulated experience informing judgement in real time.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Accumpilate Inform Intuition Judgement Real Time Unconscious
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
It’s as though either you accept [religious] doctrine and then you can have all the nice stuff, or you reject the doctrine and you’re living in some kind of spiritual wasteland under the guidance of CNN and Walmart.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Accept Afford Desire Either Grow Poorer Possess Relative Resource Rich Something Time
Do you love me enough that I may be weak with you? Everyone loves strength, but do you love me for my weakness? That is the real test.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Enough Everyone Love May Real Strength Test Weakness Wek You
Maturity: knowing where you’re crazy, trying to warn others of the fact and striving to keep yourself under control.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Control Crazy Know Maturity Try Under
Must being in love always mean being in pain?
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Always Being Love Must Pain

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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