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My writing always came out of a very personal place, out of an attempt to stay sane.

Alain de Botton

Socrates, on being insulted in the marketplace, asked by a passerby, “Don’t you worry about being called names?” retorted, “Why? Do you think I should resent it if an ass had kicked me?
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Ask Being Insult Marketplace Name Passerby Restore
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
One rarely falls in love without being as much attracted to what is interestingly wrong with someone as what is objectively healthy.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Attract Fall Healthy Interest Object Rare Someone
The difference between hope and despair is a different way of telling stories from the same facts.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Badly Between Despair Difference Different Story Tell Way
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
Newspapers are being read all around. The point is not, of course, to glean new information, but rather to coax the mind out of its sleep-induced introspective temper.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

All Round Coax Information Mind Newspaper Out Post Rather Read
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
Unnatural to expect that learning to be happy should be any easier than, say, learning to play the violin or require any less practice.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Easier Except Happy Learn Less Play Practice Require Unnatural Violin
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
The finest proof of our loyalty toward one another was our monstrous disloyalties towards everyone else.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Another Disloyalty Everyone Finest Loyalty Monstrous Proof Toward
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
The very act of drawing an object, however badly, swiftly takes the drawer from a woolly sense of what the object looks like to a precise awareness of its component parts and particularities.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Act Draw Drawer Like Look Object Sense Swiftly
People who readily accept the need for a gym will resist that their personalities might need some work too.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Gym Need People Readily Resist Some Work
Everyone returns us to a different sense of ourselves, for we become a little of who they think we are.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Different Everyone Ourselves Return Sense Think
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
The mind may be reluctant to think properly when thinking is all it is supposed to do; the task can be as paralysing as having to tell a joke or mimic an accent on demand.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Mimic Mind Paralyse Properly Recusant Suppose Think
It seems that most of us could benefit from a brush with a near-fatal disaster to help us recognise the important things that we are too defeated or embittered to recognise from day to day.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Benefit Brush Disaster Fatal Help Important Recognise Seem Thing
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 should read other people’s books in order to learn what we feel; it is our own thoughts we should be developing, even if it is another writer’s thought that help us to do so.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Book Help Hope Order Other People Reckless
Intuition is unconscious accumulated experience informing judgement in real time.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Accumpilate Inform Intuition Judgement Real Time Unconscious
Maturity: the confidence to have no opinions on many things.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Confidence Many Maturity Opinion Thing
It is perhaps sad books that best console us when we are sad.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Book Console Perhaps Sad
If one felt successful, there’d be so little incentive to be successful.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Felt Incentive Successful
We envy only those whom we feel ourselves to be like; we envy only members of our reference group. There are few successes more unendurable than those of our close friends.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Close Envy Feel Friend Group Member Ourselves Reference
One of the best protections against disappointment is to have a lot going on.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Against Best Disappointment Lot Protection
The only way to be happy is to realise how much depends on how you look at things
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Depend Happy Look Only Realise Thing Way
Forgiveness requires a sense that bad behaviour is a sign of suffering rather than malice.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Behaviour Forgive Malice Require Sense Sign Suffer

My writing always came out of a very personal place, out of an attempt to stay sane.

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My writing always came out of a very personal place, out of an attempt to stay sane.

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