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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

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
Philosophy had supplied Socrates with convictions in which he had been able to have rational, as opposed to hysterical, confidence when faced with disapproval.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Conviction Disapproval Face Oppose Philosophy Rational Supply
The happiness that may emerge from taking a second look is central to Proust’s therapeutic conception. It reveals the extent to which our dissatisfactions may be the result of failing to look properly at our lives rather than the result of anything inherently deficient about them.
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Book Central Conception Emerge Happiness Property Reveal
I learnt to stop fantasising about the perfect job or the perfect relationship because that can actually be an excuse for not living.
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Actual Excuse Fantasies Job Learn Live Perfect Relationship
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 largest part of what we call ‘personality’ is determined by how we’ve opted to defend ourselves against anxiety and sadness”.
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Anxiety Defend Determine Largets Ourself Part Personally Sad
There is no such thing as work-life balance. Everything worth fighting for unbalances your life.
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Balance Everything Fight Life Such Thing Unbalance Work
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?”
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Death Life Reason Successful Tell Work Year
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.
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Childlike Journey Life Nourish Precious Relevant Secular Seem Vulnerable
The need for love hallucinates a prince or princess. The oasis complex is never a complete delusion: the man in the desert does see something on the horizon. It is just that the palms have withered, the well is dry, and the place is infected with locusts.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Complex Delusion Desert Hallucinate Horizon Need Oasis Prince Princess
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.
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Before Blend Define Joy Melancholy Perfection Sadness Sear
Differ though we might with Christianity’s view of what precisely our souls need, it is hard to discredit the provocative underlying thesis.
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Community Differ might Need Precise Proactive Religious Soul Thesis
One kind of good book should leave you asking: how did the author know that about me?
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Ask Author Book Kind Know Leave One
You normally have to be bashed about a bit by life to see the point of daffodils, sunsets and uneventful nice days.
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Bash Daffodil Day Have Nice Normal Sunset
A ‘good job’ can be both practically attractive while still not good enough to devote your entire life to.
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Devote Enough Entire Good Job Life Practically
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

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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