Quote

Rather than employing it as a supplement to active, conscious seeing, they used the medium as a substitute, paying less attention to the world than they had done previously, taking it on faith that photography automatically assured them possession of it.

Alain de Botton

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Alain de Botton
Age: 55
Born: 1969
Born: December 20
Journalist
Philosopher
Publisher
Writer
City of Zurich
Alain De Botton
Attention
Mediums
Supplements
Rather
Paying
Employing
Less
Possession
Previously
Faith
Active
Automatically
Used
Photography
Substitute
Done
Conscious
Assured
World
Taking
Substitutes
Seeing
Medium
Supplement

More quotes by Alain de Botton

Image
One wants never to give up this crystalline perspective. One wants to keep counterpositioning home with what one knows of alternative realities, as they exist in Tunis or Hyderabad. One wants never to forget that nothing here is normal, that the streets are different in Wisebaden, and Louyang, that this is just one of many possible worlds.
Alain de Botton
Image
The universe is large and we are tiny, without the need for further religious superstructure. One can have so-called spiritual moments without belief in the spirit.
Alain de Botton
Image
Bad architecture is in the end as much a failure of psychology as of design. It is an example expressed through materials of the same tendencies which in other domains will lead us to marry the wrong people, choose inappropriate jobs and book unsuccessful holidays: the tendency not to understand who we are and what will satisfy us.
Alain de Botton
Image
It is perhaps sad books that best console us when we are sad.
Alain de Botton
Image
We should not be frightened by appearances.
Alain de Botton
Image
Must being in love always mean being in pain?
Alain de Botton
Image
One of the best protections against disappointment is to have a lot going on.
Alain de Botton
Image
The pleasure we derive from journeys is perhaps dependent more on the mindset with which we travel than on the destination we travel to.
Alain de Botton
Image
It would scarcely be acceptable, for example, to ask in the course of an ordinary conversation what our society holds to be the purpose of work.
Alain de Botton
Image
I was foreign and Jewish, with a funny name, and was very small and hated sport, a real problem at an English prep school. So the way to get round it was to become the school joker, which I did quite effectively - I was always fooling around to make the people who would otherwise dump me in the loo laugh.
Alain de Botton
Image
Not being understood may be taken as a sign that there is much in one to understand.
Alain de Botton
Image
A successful work will draw out the features capable of exciting a sense of beauty and interest in the spectator.
Alain de Botton
Image
Every time we feel satisfied with what we have, we can be counted as rich, however little we may actually possess.
Alain de Botton
Image
It is in dialogue with pain that many beautiful things acquire their value. Acquaintance with grief turns out to be one of the more unusual prerequisites of architectural appreciation. We might, quite aside from all other requirements, need to be a little sad before buildings can properly touch us.
Alain de Botton
Image
Feeling lost, crazy and desperate belongs to a good life as much as optimism, certainty and reason.
Alain de Botton
Image
I am conscious of trying to stretch the boundaries of non-fiction writing. It's always surprised me how little attention many non-fiction writers pay to the formal aspects of their work.
Alain de Botton
Image
I'm also interested in the modern suggestion that you can have a combination of love and sex in a marriage - which no previous society has ever believed.
Alain de Botton
Image
What we find exotic abroad may be what we hunger for in vain at home.
Alain de Botton
Image
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
Image
The company of certain people may excite our generosity and sensitivity, while that of others awakens our competitiveness and envy.
Alain de Botton