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We are not always humiliated by failing; we are humiliated only if we first invest our pride and sense of worth in a given achievement and then do not reach it.

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
As an atheist, I think there are lots of things religions get up to which are of value to non-believers – and one of those things is trying to be a bit better than we normally manage to be.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Atheist Believer Non Normal One Religion Thing Try Value
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
Our greatest furies spring from events which violate our sense of the ground of our existence.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Event Existence Fury Great Ground Sense Spring Violate
One of the better guarantors of ending up in a good relationship: an advanced capacity to be alone.
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Advance Alone Better Capacity End Good Guarantor One Relationship
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
The largest part of what we call ‘personality’ is determined by how we’ve opted to defend ourselves against anxiety and sadness”.
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Anxiety Defend Determine Largets Ourself Part Personally Sad
It wasn’t only fanatics and drunkards who began conversations with strangers in public.
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Began Conversation Drunkard Fall Humiliate Public Stranger
The challenge for a human now is to be more interesting to another than his or her smartphone.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Challenge Human Interest More Now Smartphone
Work is most fulfilling when you’re at the comfortable, exciting edge of not quite knowing what you are doing.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Comfortable Do Edge Excite Fulfill Quite Work
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
Perhaps it is true that we do not really exist until there is someone there to see us existing, we cannot properly speak until there is someone who can understand what we are saying in essence, we are not wholly alive until we are loved.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Essence Exist Existing Love Perhaps Properly Someone Speak Until
Social media has lots of benefits, but compared to Christianity, it tends to group people by interests. Religion puts you with people who have nothing in common except that you’re human.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Benefit Community Compare Interest Media Religious Social
It is by finding out what something is not that one comes closest to understanding what it is.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Close Come Find Something Understanding
One of our major flaws, and causes of unhappiness, is that we find it hard to take note of appreciate and be grateful for what is always around us. We suffer because we lose sight of the value of what is before us and yearn, often unfairly, for the imagined attraction elsewhere.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Appreciate Cause Flaw Grateful Major Unhappiness
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

We are not always humiliated by failing; we are humiliated only if we first invest our pride and sense of worth in a given achievement and then do not reach it.

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We are not always humiliated by failing; we are humiliated only if we first invest our pride and sense of worth in a given achievement and then do not reach it.

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Popular Authors

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