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Getting to the top has an unfortunate tendency to persuade people that the system is OK after all.

Alain de Botton

Mental health: having enough safe places in your mind for your thoughts to settle.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Emouhj Health Mental Place Safe Settle
Which seems no less relevant in the secular realm than in the religious one-that we have within us a precious, childlike, vulnerable core which we should nourish and nurture on its turbulent journey through life.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Childlike Journey Life Nourish Precious Relevant Secular Seem Vulnerable
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

Achievement Always Fall First Humiliate Invest Price Sense Worth
Wealth is not an absolute. It is relative to desire. Every time we yearn for something we cannot afford, we grow poorer, whatever our resources. And every time we feel satisfied with what we have, we can be counted as rich, however little we may actually possess.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Absolute Afford Desire Grow Relative Something Time Wealth
Yet often, they know but just don’t care. So the task of serious journalism isn’t just to lay out truths. It is to make vital truths compelling to a big audience.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Audience Big Compell Truth Vital
When work is not going well, it’s useful to remember that our identities stretch beyond what is on the business card, that we were people long before we became workers – and will continue to be human once we have put our tools down forever.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Being Business Card Go Remember Useful Well Work
Bad art might be defined as a series of bad choices about what to show and what to leave out.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Bad Choice Define Leave might Out Series Show
to design means forcing ourselves to unlearn what we believe we already know, patiently to take apart the mechanisms behind our reflexes and to acknowledge the mystery and stupefying complexity of everyday gestures like switching off a light of turning on a tap
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Already Behaviour Design Force Mechanism Ourselves Patiently Unlearn
What kills us isn’t one big thing, but thousands of tiny obligations we can’t turn down for fear of disappointing others.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Disappoint Kill Obligation Other Thing Thousand
If our lives are dominated by a search for happiness, then perhaps few activities reveal as much about the dynamics of this quest – in all its ardour and paradoxes – than our travels.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Activity Dominate Dynamic Few Happiness Live Paradox Perhaps Quest Search
When you look at the Moon, you think, ‘I’m really small. What are my problems?’ It sets things into perspective. We should all look at the Moon a bit more often.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Look Moon More Often Perspective Problem Really Small Think
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
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
One of the better guarantors of ending up in a good relationship: an advanced capacity to be alone.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Advance Alone Better Capacity End Good Guarantor One Relationship
Our disrespect for thinking: someone sitting in a chair, gazing out of a window blankly, always described as ‘doing nothing’.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Blankly Chair Describe Disrespect Doing Gaze Nothing Sit Someone Think Window
Not everyone is worth listening to.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Everyone Listen Worth

Getting to the top has an unfortunate tendency to persuade people that the system is OK after all.

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Getting to the top has an unfortunate tendency to persuade people that the system is OK after all.

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