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The company of certain people may excite our generosity and sensitivity, while that of others awakens our competitiveness and envy.

Alain de Botton

People only get really interesting when they start to rattle the bars of their cages.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Bar Cage Interest People Rattle Really Start
Our sadness won’t be of the searing kind but more like a blend of joy and melancholy: joy at the perfection we see before us, melancholy at an awareness of how seldom we are sufficiently blessed to encounter anything of its kind.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Before Blend Define Joy Melancholy Perfection Sadness Sear
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
We don’t really learn anything properly until there is a problem, until we are in pain, until something fails to go as we had hoped … We suffer, therefore we think.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Anything Hope Learn Pain Properly Something Suffer
Once I began to consider everything as being of potential interest, objects released latent layers of value.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Began Consider Everything Interest Object Potential Release Value
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
The pleasure we derive from journeys is perhaps dependent more on the mindset with which we travel than on the destination we travel to.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Dependent Derive Destination Journey Mindset More Pleasure
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
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
Everyone wants a better life: very few of us want to be better people.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Better Everyone Few Life People Want
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
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
Good books put a finger on emotions that are deeply our own – but that we could never have described on our own.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Anxiety Apprehend Book Continuous Dangerous Emotion Enjoy Finger Gloom Good
There is real danger of a disconnect between what’s on your business card and who you are deep inside, and it’s not a disconnect that the world is ready to be patient with.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Business Card Danger Dep Disconnect Inside
I am in general a very pessimistic person with an optimistic, day to day take on things. The bare facts of life are utterly terrifying. And yet, one can laugh. Indeed, one has to laugh precisely because of the darkness: the nervous laughter of the trenches.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Day General Life Optimistic Person Pessimistic Take Terrific Thing
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

The company of certain people may excite our generosity and sensitivity, while that of others awakens our competitiveness and envy.

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The company of certain people may excite our generosity and sensitivity, while that of others awakens our competitiveness and envy.

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