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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

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

Devote Enough Entire Good Job Life Practically
It is in dialogue with pain that many beautiful things acquire their value. Acquaintance with grief turns out to be one of the more unusual prerequisites of architectural appreciation. We might, quite aside from all other requirements, need to be a little sad before buildings can properly touch us.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Acquaintance Acquire Beautiful Dialogue Grief Pain Thing Turn More Value
Social media has lots of benefits, but compared to Christianity, it tends to group people by interests. Religion puts you with people who have nothing in common except that you’re human.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Benefit Community Compare Interest Media Religious Social
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
People only get really interesting when they start to rattle the bars of their cages.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Bar Cage Interest People Rattle Really Start
…if the beginnings of love and amorous politics are equally rosy, then the ends may be equally bloody.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Amorous Beginning Bloody End Equally Love Politics
You have to be quite heavily invested in someone to do them the honour of telling them you’re annoyed with them.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Annoy Heavily Honor Invest Quite Someone Tell
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
Journeys are the midwives of thought. Few places are more conducive to internal conversations than moving planes, ships or trains.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Conducive Conversation Few Internal Journey Mindwive Move Place Plane Ship Train
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
Arguments are like eels: however logical, they may slip from the minds weak grasp unless fixed there by imagery and style.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Argument Eel Fixed Grasp Imagery Like Logical Mind Slip Style Unless Weak
The attentions of others matter to us because we are afflicted by a congenital uncertainty as to our own value, as a result of which affliction we tend to allow others’ appraisals to play a determining role in how we see ourselves. Our sense of identity is held captive by the judgements of those we live among.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Affiche Appraisal Attention Congenital Determine Matter People Uncertainty
There’s a whole category of people who miss out by not allowing themselves to be weird enough.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Allow Category Enough Help People Themselves Weird Whole
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
The problem isn’t so much finding good ideas (there is no shortage) as embedding the ones we have into everyday practice.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Embed Everyday Find Good Practice Problem
If one felt successful, there’d be so little incentive to be successful.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Felt Incentive Successful

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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