I like Alain de Botton as a writer and thinker. The book is written in a clear concise style, and the ideas are practical. It brings one back to Earth. ( )

Another excellent book from The School of Life. Full of interesting points of view and new ideas. I heard the distinct voice of Allain de Botton throughout the book, as if he were reading it out loud. Here are the favourite excerpts:
Pg. 22:What alarms us is not so much how hard the task is but how easy we imagined it might be.
Pg. 36: Our heads are not understood to be where anything especially valuabke might lie.
Pg. 37: We have read more than Socrates; we have had as many - if not more - experiences than Plato. We do not have to go back to university to do yet another degree. We already have the raw material with which to produce valuable insights. We are simply lacking confidence.
Pg. 42: This explains why small children are, in their own way, so much more interesting than the average adult: they have not yet become experts in what NOT to say or think.
Pg. 96: We feel envy when someone else has access to an area of happiness that eludes us..... Yet envy, while uncomfortable, provides us with a message from confusedbut important parts of our personality about what we should be doing....envy is a call for action.
Pg. 97: The problem with envy is its inaccuracy. ... The challenge is not to avoid envy but to bring it more clearly into focus in order to guide our next steps.
Pg. 129: It is an implicit faith in their own perfection that turns people into unbearably harsh judges. ( )