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In the works of Lucretius, we find two reasons why we shouldn’t worry about death. If you have had a successful life, Lucretius tell us, there’s no reason to mind its end. And, if you haven’t had a good time, “Why do you seek to add more years, which would also pass but ill?”

Alain de Botton

It is perhaps sad books that best console us when we are sad.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Book Console Perhaps Sad
Mental health: having enough safe places in your mind for your thoughts to settle.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Emouhj Health Mental Place Safe Settle
Intuition is unconscious accumulated experience informing judgement in real time.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Accumpilate Inform Intuition Judgement Real Time Unconscious
It’s hard loving those who don’t much like themselves: “If you’re so great, why would you think I’m so great.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Great Hate Live Long Themselves
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
Unhappiness can stem from having only one perspective to play with.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Have Perspective Play Stem Unhappiness
There is no such thing as work-life balance. Everything worth fighting for unbalances your life.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Balance Everything Fight Life Such Thing Unbalance Work
These inventors were elevating the formulation of entrepreneurial ideas to the status of a visionary activity. Though forced to justify their efforts in the pragmatic language of venture capital, they were at heart utopian thinkers intent on transforming the world.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Activity Elevate Entrepreneur Force Formulation Ide Intent Inventor Vision World
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
The attentions of others matter to us because we are afflicted by a congenital uncertainty as to our own value, as a result of which affliction we tend to allow others’ appraisals to play a determining role in how we see ourselves. Our sense of identity is held captive by the judgements of those we live among.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Affiche Appraisal Attention Congenital Determine Matter People Uncertainty
The need for love hallucinates a prince or princess. The oasis complex is never a complete delusion: the man in the desert does see something on the horizon. It is just that the palms have withered, the well is dry, and the place is infected with locusts.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Complex Delusion Desert Hallucinate Horizon Need Oasis Prince Princess
Intimacy is the capacity to be rather weird with someone – and finding that that’s ok with them.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Capacity Find Intimacy Rather Someone
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
Philosophy had supplied Socrates with convictions in which he had been able to have rational, as opposed to hysterical, confidence when faced with disapproval.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Conviction Disapproval Face Oppose Philosophy Rational Supply
We should not feel embarrassed by our difficulties, only by our failure to grow anything beautiful from them.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Anything Beautiful Difficulty Embarrassed Failure Feel
Art holds out the promise of inner wholeness.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Art Hold Inner Promise Wholeness

In the works of Lucretius, we find two reasons why we shouldn’t worry about death. If you have had a successful life, Lucretius tell us, there’s no reason to mind its end. And, if you haven’t had a good time, “Why do you seek to add more years, which would also pass but ill?”

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In the works of Lucretius, we find two reasons why we shouldn’t worry about death. If you have had a successful life, Lucretius tell us, there’s no reason to mind its end. And, if you haven’t had a good time, “Why do you seek to add more years, which would also pass but ill?”

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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