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A notorious inability to express emotions makes human beings the only animals capable of suicide.

Alain de Botton

Because the rhythm of conversation makes no allowance for dead periods, because the presence of others calls for continuous responses, we are left to regret the inanity of what we say, and the missed opportunity of what we do not.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Allow Call Continuous Conversation Dead Make Misuse Opportunity Period Presence Rhythm
In their different ways, art and philosophy help us, in Schopenhauer’s words, to turn pain into knowledge.
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Art Different Help Knowledge Pain People Philosophy Way Word
There is real danger of a disconnect between what’s on your business card and who you are deep inside, and it’s not a disconnect that the world is ready to be patient with.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Business Card Danger Dep Disconnect Inside
The difference between hope and despair is a different way of telling stories from the same facts.
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Badly Between Despair Difference Different Story Tell Way
Being content is perhaps no less easy than playing the violin well: and requires no less practice.
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Content Less Perhaps Play Practice Require Well
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.
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Aesthetic Capacity Critical Draw Good Happiness Material Object Satisfy Seem
Rage is caused by a conviction, almost comic in its optimistic origins (however tragic in its effects), that a given frustration has not been written into the contract of life.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Almost Cause Comic Conviction Frustration Optimistic Origin Rage
The problem isn’t so much finding good ideas (there is no shortage) as embedding the ones we have into everyday practice.
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Embed Everyday Find Good Practice Problem
Dreams reveal we never quite get ‘over’ anything: it’s all still in there somewhere.
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Anything Dream never Quite Reveal Somewhere
The finest proof of our loyalty toward one another was our monstrous disloyalties towards everyone else.
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Another Disloyalty Everyone Finest Loyalty Monstrous Proof Toward
Differ though we might with Christianity’s view of what precisely our souls need, it is hard to discredit the provocative underlying thesis.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Community Differ might Need Precise Proactive Religious Soul Thesis
Our sadness won’t be of the searing kind but more like a blend of joy and melancholy: joy at the perfection we see before us, melancholy at an awareness of how seldom we are sufficiently blessed to encounter anything of its kind.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Before Blend Define Joy Melancholy Perfection Sadness Sear
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
Literature is the greatest reality simulator – a machine that puts you through infinitely more situations than you can ever directly witness.
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Direct Great Literature Machine Put Reality Simulator Witness
As we write, so we build: to keep a record of what matters to us.
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Built Matter Record Write
One rarely falls in love without being as much attracted to what is interestingly wrong with someone as what is objectively healthy.
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Attract Fall Healthy Interest Object Rare Someone
The only people we can think of as normal are those we don’t yet know very well.
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Normal Very Only People Think Well
…if the beginnings of love and amorous politics are equally rosy, then the ends may be equally bloody.
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Amorous Beginning Bloody End Equally Love Politics
Never too late to learn some embarrassingly basic, stupidly obvious things about oneself.
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Embarrassingly Learn never Oneself Some Stupid Thing
Work is most fulfilling when you’re at the comfortable, exciting edge of not quite knowing what you are doing.
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Comfortable Do Edge Excite Fulfill Quite Work
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
We need a refuge to shore up our states of mind, because so much of the world is opposed to our allegiances. We need our rooms to align us to desirable versions of ourselves and to keep alive the important, evanescent sides of us.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Allegiance Desirable Important Mind Need Oppose Shore Site State Version World
As an atheist, I think there are lots of things religions get up to which are of value to non-believers – and one of those things is trying to be a bit better than we normally manage to be.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Atheist Believer Non Normal One Religion Thing Try 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.
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Benefit Community Compare Interest Media Religious Social
Maturity: knowing where you’re crazy, trying to warn others of the fact and striving to keep yourself under control.
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Control Crazy Know Maturity Try Under
After 40 (old age for most of man’s history), one should strive to be more or less packed and ready to go were the end call to come.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Age End Less Man More Most Old Pack Should Strive
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

A notorious inability to express emotions makes human beings the only animals capable of suicide.

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A notorious inability to express emotions makes human beings the only animals capable of suicide.

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