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One’s doing well if age improves even slightly one’s capacity to hold on to that vital truism: “This too shall pass.

Alain de Botton

The good parent: someone who doesn’t mind, for a time, being hated by their children.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Children Good Hate Mind Parent Someone Time
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
As adults, we try to develop the character traits that would have rescued our parents.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Adult Character Develop Parent Rescue Trait
So many complaints boil down to the belly ache of the fragile, mortal, ignored ego in a vast and indifferent universe.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Ache Belly Complaint Down Ego Fragile Ignore Universe
Architects themselves tend to shy away from the word, preferring instead to talk about the manipulation of space.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Architect Manipulation Prefer Shy Space Themselves Word
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
The media insists on taking what someone didn’t mean to say as being far closer to the truth than what they did.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Closer Insist Media On Being Say Truth
You need a long hard day’s work to reveal the logic of the craving for very bad tv and alcohol.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Alcohol Day Hard Logic Long Need Reveal
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
Most anger stems from feelings of weakness, sadness and fear: hard to remember when one is at the receiving end of its defiant roar.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Anger End Fear Feel Most Receive Remember Weakness
It is not just nature that defies us. Human life is as overwhelming… If we spend time in it [the vast spaces of nature], they may help us to accept more graciously the great, unfathomable events that molest our lives and will inevitably return us to dust.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Defies Human Life Nature Overwhelms Space Spend Time
The only people we can think of as normal are those we don’t yet know very well.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Normal Very Only People Think Well
Our minds are susceptible to the influence of external voices telling us what we require to be satisfied, voices that may drown out the faint sounds emitted by our souls and distract us from the careful, arduous task of accurately naming our priorities.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Drown External Influence Mind Require Satisfy Susceptible Tell Voice
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
A successful work will draw out the features capable of exciting a sense of beauty and interest in the spectator.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Beauty Capable Excite Feature Sense Spectator Successful Work
For paranoia about ‘what other people think’ : remember that only some hate, a very few love – and almost all just don’t care.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Almost Care Few Hate Love Paranoia People Remember Think

One’s doing well if age improves even slightly one’s capacity to hold on to that vital truism: “This too shall pass.

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One’s doing well if age improves even slightly one’s capacity to hold on to that vital truism: “This too shall pass.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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