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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

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.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Beauty Deep External Inward Object Physical Possess Seek Tell Voice
Our jobs make relentless calls on a narrow band of our faculties, reducing our chances of achieving rounded personalities and leaving us to suspect (often in the gathering darkness of a Sunday evening) that much of who we are, or could be, has gone unexplored.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Achieve Band Faculty Job Make Narrow Personality Reduce Change Relentless Round
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
We need a home in the psychological sense as much as we need one in the physical: to compensate for a vulnerability.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Compensate Home Much Need Physical Psychological Vulnerability
A good half of the art of living is resilience.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Good Half Live Resilience
It looks like it’s wasting time, but literature is actually the ultimate time-saver – because it gives us access to a range of emotions and events that it would take you years, decades, millennia to try to experience directly.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Access Emotion Like Literature Look Range Saver Time Ultimate Waste
The media insists on taking what someone didn’t mean to say as being far closer to the truth than what they did.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Closer Insist Media On Being Say Truth
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
These inventors were elevating the formulation of entrepreneurial ideas to the status of a visionary activity. Though forced to justify their efforts in the pragmatic language of venture capital, they were at heart utopian thinkers intent on transforming the world.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Activity Elevate Entrepreneur Force Formulation Ide Intent Inventor Vision World
The largest part of what we call ‘personality’ is determined by how we’ve opted to defend ourselves against anxiety and sadness”.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Anxiety Defend Determine Largets Ourself Part Personally Sad
To one’s enemies: “I hate myself more than you ever could.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Enemy Ever Hate More Myself Own
Insomnia is a glamorous term for thoughts you forgot to have in the day.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Dance Forgot Glamorous Insomnia Term Thought
As we write, so we build: to keep a record of what matters to us.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Built Matter Record Write
Our minds are susceptible to the influence of external voices telling us what we require to be satisfied, voices that may drown out the faint sounds emitted by our souls and distract us from the careful, arduous task of accurately naming our priorities.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Drown External Influence Mind Require Satisfy Susceptible Tell Voice
So many complaints boil down to the belly ache of the fragile, mortal, ignored ego in a vast and indifferent universe.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Ache Belly Complaint Down Ego Fragile Ignore Universe
There are selections so acute that they come to define a place, with the result that we can no longer travel through that landscape without being reminded of what a great artist noticed there.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Acute Come Define Landscape Longer Place Result Selection Travel

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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