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A ‘good job’ can be both practically attractive while still not good enough to devote your entire life to.

Alain de Botton

Artistic accounts involve severe abbreviations of what reality will force upon us.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Abbreviation Account Artistic Force Involve Reality Serve
Being content is perhaps no less easy than playing the violin well: and requires no less practice.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Content Less Perhaps Play Practice Require Well
He did not mean to depress us, rather to free us from expectations which inspire bitterness. It is consoling, when love has let us down, to hear that happiness was never part of the plan.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Bitterness Console Depress Expectation Inspire Love Happy Part Plan Rather
A good half of the art of living is resilience.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Good Half Live Resilience
We each appear to hold within ourselves a range of divergent views as to our native qualities.. And amid such uncertainty, we typically turn to the wider world to settle the question of our significance.. we seem beholden to affections of others to endure ourselves.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Amid Appear Divergent Each Hold Native Ourselves Quality Range Such Uncertainty View
The activities of drawing, eating and drinking, all involve assimilations by the self of desirable elements from the world, a transfer of goodness from without to within.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Activity Assimilation Desirable Draw Drink Eat Element Goodness Involve Transfer World
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
There is a longing for a return to a time without the need for choices, free of the regret at the inevitable loss that all choice (however wonderful) has entailed.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Choice Inevitable Long Loss Need Regret Return Time
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
Good sex isn’t just fun, it keeps us sane and happy. Having sex with someone makes us feel wanted, alive and potent.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Alive Fum Good Happy Just Keep Potent Sane Sex Wanted
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

Death Life Reason Successful Tell Work Year
Most of what makes a book ‘good’ is that we are reading it at the right moment for us.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Book Make Moment Most Read Right
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
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
Every time we feel satisfied with what we have, we can be counted as rich, however little we may actually possess.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Every Time Feel Little Possess Rich Satisfy
If one felt successful, there’d be so little incentive to be successful.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Felt Incentive Successful
A notorious inability to express emotions makes human beings the only animals capable of suicide.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Animal Capable Emotion Express Human Inability Notorious Suicide Time
Art cannot single-handedly create enthusiasm… it merely contributes to enthusiasm and guides us to be more conscious of feelings that we might previously have experienced only tentatively or hurriedly.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Conscious Contribute Create Enthusiasm Guide Merely More Single
Most of our childhood is stored not in photos, but in certain biscuits, lights of day, smells, textures of carpet.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Biscuit Carpet Childhood Day Light Most Photo Smell Store Texture
In the oasis complex, the thirsty man images he sees water, palm trees, and shade not because he has evidence for the belief, but because he has a need for it. Desperate needs bring about a hallucination of their solution: thirst hallucinates water.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Belief Complex Evidence Man Oasis Palm Thirsty Tree Water
There may be significant things to learn about people by looking at what annoys them most.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Annoy Learn Look Most People Significant Thing
Getting to the top has an unfortunate tendency to persuade people that the system is OK after all.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

After All Get OK People System Tendency Top Unfortunate
You need a long hard day’s work to reveal the logic of the craving for very bad tv and alcohol.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Alcohol Day Hard Logic Long Need Reveal
Every adult life could be said to be defined by two great love stories: the story of our quest for sexual love and the story of our quest for love from the world.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Define Every Adult Great Love Quest Sexual Story
I went to church and couldn’t swallow it. The music was nice but I don’t belong there.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Belong Church Music Nice Swallow
When Proust urges us to evaluate the world properly, he repeatedly reminds us of the value of modest scenes.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Evaluate Modest Property Repeatedly Scene Urge Value World
Politics is so difficult, it’s generally only people who aren’t quite up to the task who feel convinced they are.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Convince Difficult Feel Generally Only People Politics Quite Task

A ‘good job’ can be both practically attractive while still not good enough to devote your entire life to.

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A ‘good job’ can be both practically attractive while still not good enough to devote your entire life to.

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Popular Authors

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