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It is no coincidence that the Western attraction to sublime landscapes developed at precisely the moment when traditional beliefs in God began to wane.

Alain de Botton

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Alain de Botton
Age: 54
Born: 1969
Born: December 20
Journalist
Philosopher
Publisher
Writer
City of Zurich
Alain De Botton
Belief
Precisely
Religion
Attraction
Moment
Developed
Moments
Beliefs
Landscape
Wane
Began
Landscapes
Traditional
Coincidence
Western
Sublime

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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.
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The media insists on taking what someone didn't mean to say as being far closer to the truth than what they did.
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Maturity: the confidence to have no opinions on many things.
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A successful work will draw out the features capable of exciting a sense of beauty and interest in the spectator.
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People who go on to be writers are those who can forgive themselves the horror of the first draft.
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The problem isn't so much finding good ideas (there is no shortage) as embedding the ones we have into everyday practice.
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The good parent: someone who doesn't mind, for a time, being hated by their children.
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Reputation matters so much only because people so seldom think for themselves.
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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.
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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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Social media has lots of benefits, but compared to Christianity, it tends to group people by interests. Religion puts you with people who have nothing in common except that you're human.
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It is in books, poems, paintings which often give us the confidence to take seriously feelings in ourselves that we might otherwise never have thought to acknowledge.
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As we write, so we build: to keep a record of what matters to us.
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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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If we are inclined to forget how much there is in the world besides that which we anticipate, then works of art are perhaps a little to blame, for in them we find at work the same process of simplification or selection as in the imagination.
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How generous was it to offer gifts to people one knew would never accept them?
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We used to build temples, and museums are about as close as secular society dares to go in facing up to the idea that a good building can change your life (and a bad one ruin it).
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We are continuously challenged to discover new works of culture—and, in the process, we don’t allow any one of them to assume a weight in our minds.
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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.
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It is perhaps sad books that best console us when we are sad, and to lonely service stations that we should drive when there is no one for us to hold or love.
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