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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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Forgiveness requires a sense that bad behaviour is a sign of suffering rather than malice.
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What we find exotic abroad may be what we hunger for in vain at home.
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Sweetness is the opposite of machismo, which is everywhere-and I really don't get on with machismo. I'm interested in sensitivity, and weakness, and fear, and anxiety, because I think that, at the end of the day, behind our masks, that's what we are.
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Reputation matters so much only because people so seldom think for themselves.
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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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What we seek, at the deepest level, is inwardly to resemble, rather than physically to possess, the objects and places that touch us through their beauty.
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The secular world is full of holes. We have secularized badly.
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In a secularising world, art has replaced religion as a touchstone of our reverence and devotion.
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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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Serious journalists often imagine society is adrift because people don't know certain things. 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.
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The only people we can think of as normal are those we don't yet know very well.
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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.
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Year-end financial statements express a truth about office life which is no less irrefutable yet also, in the end, no less irrelevant or irritating than an evolutionary biologist's proud reminder that the purpose of existence lies in the propagation of our genes.
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