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The only way to be happy is to realise how much depends on how you look at things

Alain de Botton

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

Book Console Perhaps Sad
Though it may feel otherwise, enjoying life is no more dangerous than apprehending it with continuous anxiety and gloom.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Apprehend Continous Dangerous Enjoy Feel More Otherwise
The best cure for one’s bad tendencies is to see them in action in another person.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Action Another Bad Best Cure Person Tendency
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
William James once made an acute point about the relationship between happiness and expectation. He argued that satisfaction with ourselves does not require us to succeed in every endeavour.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Acute Between Endeavour Expectation Happiness Made Point Relationship
Our capacity to draw happiness from aesthetic objects or material goods in fact seems critically dependent on our first satisfying a more important range of emotional or psychological needs, among them the need for understanding, for love, expression and respect.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Aesthetic Capacity Critical Draw Good Happiness Material Object Satisfy Seem
Although I don’t believe in God, Bach’s music shows me what a love of God must feel like.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Believe Feel God Love Music Must Show
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
Because it’s bad enough not getting what you want, but it’s even worse to have an idea of what it is you want and find out at the end of the journey that it isn’t, in fact, what you wanted all along.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Along End Get Idea Want Wnough Worse
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
The inability to live in the present lies in the fear of leaving the sheltered position of anticipation or memory, and so of admitting that this is the only life that one is ever likely (heavenly intervention aside) to live.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Admit Anticipation Fear Inability Leave Lie Memory Position Present Shelter
Sweetness is the opposite of machismo, which is everywhere-and I really don’t get on with machismo. I’m interested in sensitivity, and weakness, and fear, and anxiety, because I think that, at the end of the day, behind our masks, that’s what we are.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Everywhere Get Interest Kind Machine Machismo Opposite Really Sensitive Sweetness
People only get really interesting when they start to rattle the bars of their cages.
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Bar Cage Interest People Rattle Really Start
Most of us still caged within careers chosen for us by our not entirely worldly 18-22 year old selves.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Cage Career Chosen Entirely Most Old Selve Still
It’s perhaps easier now than ever before to make a good living; it’s perhaps harder than ever before to stay calm, to be free of career anxiety.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Before Bore Calm Easier Even Good Live Make Perhaps Stay
An argument in a couple: 2 people attempting to introduce each other to important truths – by panicked shouting.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Argument Attempt Couple Important Introduce Truth

The only way to be happy is to realise how much depends on how you look at things

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The only way to be happy is to realise how much depends on how you look at things

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