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34cae07
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I never wavered in my certainty that God did not exist. I was simply liberated by the thought that there might be a way to engage with religion without having to subscribe to its supernatural content - a way, to put it in more abstract terms, to think about Fathers without upsetting my respectful memory of my own father. I recognized that my continuing resistance to theories of an afterlife or of heavenly residents was no justification for ..
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religion
god
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Alain de Botton |
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5eae830
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the truth of the maxim that beauty lies between the extremities of order and complexity.
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Alain de Botton |
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ff04e21
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We fall in love because we long to escape from ourselves with someone as ideal as we are corrupt.
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Alain de Botton |
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54df529
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Pain is surprising; we cannot understand why we have been abandoned in love... why we are unable to sleep at night.... Identifying reasons for such discomforts does not spectacularly absolve us of pain, but it may form the principal basis of a recovery. While assuring us that we are not uniquely cursed, understanding grants us a sense of the boundaries to, and bitter logic behind, our suffering. 'Griefs, at the moment when they change into ..
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Alain de Botton |
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d9f0c3f
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It might be a Proustian slogan: n'allez pas trop vite. And an advantage of not going by too fast is that the world has a chance of becoming more interesting in the process.
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Alain de Botton |
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7465f4f
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Taking architecture seriously therefore makes some singular strenuous demands upon us. It requires that we open ourselves to the idea that we are affected by our surroundings even when they are made of vinyl and would be expensive and time-consuming to ameliorate. It means conceding that we are inconveniently vulnerable to the color of our wallpaper and that our sense of purpose may be derailed by an unfortunate bedspread. At the same time,..
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Alain de Botton |
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6600119
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Insecurity is a sign of well-being. It means we haven't allowed ourselves to take other people for granted, that we remain realistic enough to see that things could genuinely turn out badly and that we are invested enough to care. It
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Alain de Botton |
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2165694
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The world upsets, disappoints, frustrates and hurts us in countless ways at every turn. It delays us, rejects our creative endeavours, overlooks us for promotions, rewards idiots and smashes our ambitions on its bleak, relentless shores. And almost invariably, we can't complain about any of it. It's too difficult to tease out who may really be to blame; and too dangerous to complain even when we know for certain (lest we be fired or laughed..
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Alain de Botton |
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c654565
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Curiosity takes ignorance seriously, and is confident enough to admit when it does not know. It is aware of not knowing, and it sets out to do something about it
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questioning
ignorance
curiosity
knowledge
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Alain de Botton |
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dc9d97b
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As victims of hurt, we frequently don't bring up what ails us, because so many wounds look absurd in the light of day.
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Alain de Botton |
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1a83e76
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Epicurus founded a school of philosophy which placed great emphasis on the importance of pleasure. "Pleasure is the beginning and the goal of a happy life," he asserted, confirming what many had long thought, but philosophers had rarely accepted. Vulgar opinion at once imagined that the pleasure Epicurus had in mind involved a lot of money, sex, drink and debauchery (associations that survive in our use of the word 'Epicurean'). But true Ep..
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philosophy
inspirational
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Alain de Botton |
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c597a08
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We are inundated with advice on where to travel to, but we hear little of why and how we should go, even though the art of travel seems naturally to sustain a number of questions neither so simple nor so trivial, and whose study might in modest ways contribute to an understanding of what the Greek philosophers beautifully termed eudaimonia, or 'human flourishing'.
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Alain de Botton |
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8e2b746
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He [Wordsworth] invited his readers to abandon their usual perspective and to consider for a time how the world might look through other eyes, to shuttle between the human and the natural perspective. Why might this be interesting, or even inspiring? Perhaps because unhappiness can stem from only having one perspective to play with.
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writing
philosophy
perspective
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Alain de Botton |
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544cf57
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Let death find us as we are building up our matchstick protests against its waves.
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Alain de Botton |
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a20f3b0
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Our capacity for calm ultimately depends on our levels of expectation: if we suppose that most things normally turn out to be slightly disappointing (but that this is OK); that change occurs slowly (but that life is long); that most people are neither terribly good nor very wicked (and this includes us); that humanity has faced crisis after crisis (yet muddled through) - if we are able to keep these entirely obvious but highly fugitive thou..
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Alain de Botton |
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02c8f3f
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The possibility of an alternative love story is a reminder that the life we are leading is only one of a myriad of possible lives, and it is the impossibility of leading them all that plunges us into sadness.
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Alain de Botton |
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66d7394
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It is surely significant that the adults who feature in children's books are rarely, if ever, Regional Sales Managers or Building Services Engineers.
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Alain de Botton |
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b11a9b7
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When Proust urges us to evaluate the world properly, he repeatedly reminds us of the value of modest scenes.
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Alain de Botton |
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3f3735f
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Albert Camus suggested that we fall in love with people because, from the outside, they look so whole, physically whole and emotionally 'together' - when subjectively, we feel dispersed and confused.
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Alain de Botton |
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ec6aba3
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We continue to need exhortations to be sympathetic and just, even if we do not believe that there is a God who has a hand in wishing to make us so. We no longer have to be brought into line by the threat of hell or the promise of paradise; we merely have to be reminded that it is we ourselves -- that is, the most mature and reasonable parts of us (seldom present in the midst of our crises and obsessions) -- who want to lead the sort of life..
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morality
reason
god
life
commandments
superstition
morals
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Alain de Botton |
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c4dabc4
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My mistake was to confuse a destiny to love with a destiny to love a specific person. It was the error of thinking that Chloe, rather than love, was inevitable.
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philosophy
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Alain de Botton |
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32762a3
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But fantasies are often the best thing we can make of our multiple and contradictory wishes; they allow us to inhabit one reality without destroying the other. Fantasizing spares those we care about from the full irresponsibility and scary strangeness of our urges.
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Alain de Botton |
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f401973
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If the world seems unfair or beyond our understanding, sublime places suggest that it is not surprising that things should be thus. We are the playthings of the forces that laid out the oceans and chiselled the mountains.
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travel
world
unfair
sublime
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Alain de Botton |
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5f8186c
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Alice cold make no sense of the despair into which she had fallen. She had always held that happiness should be defined as an absence of pain rather than the presence of pleasure. So why, with a decent job, good health, and a roof over her head, did she regularly and so childishly collapse into moist sobs?
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Alain de Botton |
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7593318
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The important books should be those that leave us wondering, with relief and gratitude, how the author could possibly have known so much about our lives. But
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Alain de Botton |
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8f2227a
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established views have frequently emerged not through a process of faultless reasoning, but through centuries of intellectual muddle. There may be no good reason for things to be the way they are.
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Alain de Botton |
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b2725f5
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Beneath the kiss itself, it is its meaning that interests us--which is why the desire to kiss someone can be decisively reduced (as it may need be, for instance, when two lovers are already married to other people) by a declaration of that desire--a confession which may in itself be so erotic as to render the actual kiss superfluous.
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Alain de Botton |
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8a5ac6b
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The twenty-four-hour diner, the station waiting room and the motel are sanctuaries for those who have, for noble reasons, failed to find a home in the ordinary world, sanctuaries for those whom Baudelaire might have dignified with the honorific 'poets'.
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Alain de Botton |
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818d74d
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Donald] Keene observed [in a book entitled The Pleasures of Japanese Literature, 1988] that the Japanese sense of beauty has long sharply differed from its Western counterpart: it has been dominated by a love of irregularity rather than symmetry, the impermanent rather than the eternal and the simple rather than the ornate. The reason owes nothing to climate or genetics, added Keene, but is the result of the actions of writers, painters and..
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visual
emotional
wabi-sabi
design
japan
value
simplicity
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Alain de Botton |
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2c4462c
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I strip myself emotionally when I confess need - that I would be lost without you, that I am not necessarily the independent person I have tried to appear, but am a far less admirable weakling with little clue of life's course or meaning. When I cry and tell you things I trust you will keep for yourself, that would destroy me if others were to learn of them, when I give up the game of gazing seductively at parties and admit it's you I care ..
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Alain de Botton |
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24e60f0
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I can't understand people who don't like chocolate. I was once going out with a guy, this guy Robert I was telling you about, and I was never really comfortable with him, but I couldn't work out why. Then one day it all became clear: he didn't like chocolate. I mean he didn't just not love it, this guy actually hated it. You could have put a bar in front of him and he wouldn't have touched it. That kind of thinking is so far removed from an..
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chocolate
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Alain de Botton |
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c7a414e
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Every fall into love involves the triumph of hope over self-knowledge. We fall in love hoping we won't find in another what we know is in ourselves, all the cowardice, weakness, laziness, dishonesty, compromise, and stupidity. We throw a cordon of love around the chosen one and decide that everything within it will somehow be free of our faults. We locate inside another a perfection that eludes us within ourselves, and through our union wit..
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Alain de Botton |
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92607b0
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Not everything which makes us feel better is good for us. Not everything which hurts may be bad.
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Alain de Botton |
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4ef014f
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There is a devilishly direct relationship between the significance of an idea and how nervous we become at the prospect of having to think about it.
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life
significance
thinking
decisions
ideas
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Alain de Botton |
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ecadf12
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The true nature of bureaucracy may be nowhere more obvious to the observer than in a developing country, for only there will it still be made manifest by the full complement of documents, files, veneered desks and cabinets - which convey the strict and inverse relationship between productivity and paperwork.
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Alain de Botton |
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be395ba
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What makes the prospect of death distinctive in the modern age is the background of permanent technological and sociological revolution against which it is set, and which serves to strip us of any possible faith in the permanence of our labours. Our ancestors could believe that their achievements had a chance of bearing up against the flow of events. We know time to be a hurricane. Our buildings, our sense of style, our ideas, all of these ..
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time
work
death
anachronisms
permanence
sociology
revolution
technology
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Alain de Botton |
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3a286d1
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The benefits of a philosophy of neo-religious pessimism are nowhere more apparent than in relation to marriage, one of modern society's most grief-stricken arrangements, which has been rendered unnecessarily hellish by the astonishing secular supposition that it should be entered into principally for the sake of happiness. Christianity and Judaism present marriage not as a union inspired and governed by subjective enthusiasm but rather, and..
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Alain de Botton |
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505ba11
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Once we are involved in a relationship, there is no longer any such thing as a minor detail.
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Alain de Botton |
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124c568
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There is a danger of developing a blanket distaste for modern life which could have its attractions but lack the all-important images to help us identify them.
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modern-life
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Alain de Botton |
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6505ead
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Do you love me enough that I may be weak with you? Everyone loves strength, but Do you love me for my weakness? That is the real test. Do you love me stripped of everything that might be lost, for only the things I will have for ever?
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Alain de Botton |
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acf4755
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The quickest way to stop noticing something, may be to buy it--just as the quickest way to stop appreciating someone may be to marry him or her.
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marriage
psychology
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Alain de Botton |
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0a83568
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We would not love if there were no lack within us, but we are offended by the discovery of a similar lack in the other.
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Alain de Botton |
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65d2462
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Growth occurs when we discover how to remain authentically ourselves in the presence of potentially threatening things. Maturity is the possession of coping skills: we can take in our stride things that previously would have knocked us off course. We are less fragile, less easily shocked and hence more capable of engaging with situations as they really are
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maturity
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Alain de Botton |
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154012b
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creature on earth seemed to Schopenhauer to be equally committed to an equally meaningless existence: Contemplate the restless industry of wretched little ants ... the life of most insects is nothing but a restless labour for preparing nourishment and dwelling for the future offspring that will come from their eggs. After the offspring have consumed the nourishment and have turned into the chrysalis stage, they enter into life merely to beg..
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Alain de Botton |