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If we are inclined to forget how much there is in the world besides that which we anticipate, then works of art are perhaps a little to blame, for in them we find at work the same process of simplification or selection as in the imagination.

Alain de Botton

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Anticipate Art Besides Forget Inclined Much Perhaps World

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Marilyn Monroe Paulo Coelho Abraham Lincoln C. S. Lewis Khalil Gibran Charlie Chaplin Gautama Buddha Isaac Newton

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
The only way to be happy is to realise how much depends on how you look at things
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Depend Happy Look Only Realise Thing Way
Art holds out the promise of inner wholeness.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Art Hold Inner Promise Wholeness
Memory is… similar to anticipation: an instrument of simplification and selection.
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Anticipation Instrument Memory Selection Similar Simplification
Bitterness: anger that forgot where it came from.
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Anger Bitterness Came Forget
Don’t despair: despair suggests you are in total control and know what is coming. You don’t – surrender to events with hope.
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Come Control Despair Hope Suggest Surrender Total
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.
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Audience Big Compell Truth Vital
Most of what makes a book ‘good’ is that we are reading it at the right moment for us.
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Book Make Moment Most Read Right
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
The happiness that may emerge from taking a second look is central to Proust’s therapeutic conception. It reveals the extent to which our dissatisfactions may be the result of failing to look properly at our lives rather than the result of anything inherently deficient about them.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Book Central Conception Emerge Happiness Property Reveal
Forgiveness requires a sense that bad behaviour is a sign of suffering rather than malice.
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Behaviour Forgive Malice Require Sense Sign Suffer
Our greatest furies spring from events which violate our sense of the ground of our existence.
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Event Existence Fury Great Ground Sense Spring Violate
What we seek, at the deepest level, is inwardly to resemble, rather than physically to possess, the objects and places that touch us through their beauty.
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Beauty Deep External Inward Object Physical Possess Seek Tell Voice
A virtuous, ordinary life, striving for wisdom but never far from folly, is achievement enough.
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Archive Enough Ordinary Strive Virtuous Wisdom
The fear of saying something stupid (which stupid people never have) has censored far more good ideas than bad ones.
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Censor Fear Idea People Say Something Stupid
Kant and Hegel are interesting thinkers. But I am happy to insist that they are also terrible writers.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Happy Instant Interest Terrible Think Writer
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
Most of our childhood is stored not in photos, but in certain biscuits, lights of day, smells, textures of carpet.
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Biscuit Carpet Childhood Day Light Most Photo Smell Store Texture
Maturity: the confidence to have no opinions on many things.
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Confidence Many Maturity Opinion Thing
It is perhaps when our lives are at their most problematic that we are likely to be most receptive to beautiful things.
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Beautiful Like Live Most Perhaps Problematic Receptive Thing
Not being understood may be taken as a sign that there is much in one to understand.
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Mauch Sign Taken Understand Understood
For paranoia about ‘what other people think’ : remember that only some hate, a very few love – and almost all just don’t care.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Almost Care Few Hate Love Paranoia People Remember Think
We are like an exquisite high-speed aircraft which for lack of a tiny part is left stranded beside the runway, rendered slower than a tractor or bicycle.
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Aircraft Bicycle Exquisite Render Runway Speed Tractor
The blunt large questions become connected to smaller, apparently esoteric ones.
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Apparently Blunt Connect Esoteric Larger One Question Smaller
The mind does most of its best thinking when we aren’t there. The answers are there in the morning.
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Answer Best Mind Morning Think
People who readily accept the need for a gym will resist that their personalities might need some work too.
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Gym Need People Readily Resist Some Work
If our lives are dominated by a search for happiness, then perhaps few activities reveal as much about the dynamics of this quest – in all its ardour and paradoxes – than our travels.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Activity Dominate Dynamic Few Happiness Live Paradox Perhaps Quest Search

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