Quote

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
Began
Landscapes
Traditional
Coincidence
Western
Sublime
Belief
Precisely
Religion
Attraction
Moment
Developed
Moments
Beliefs
Landscape
Wane

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There are people who say, 'Oh this guy is quite thick.' I think the reason is that, increasingly, I don't mind being simple in terms of literary expression. Others say, 'No, no, no. He went to Cambridge. He got a good degree. He must be Einstein.'
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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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He did not mean to depress us, rather to free us from expectations which inspire bitterness. It is consoling, when love has let us down, to hear that happiness was never part of the plan.
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Bad art might be defined as a series of bad choices about what to show and what to leave out.
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A danger of travel is that we see things at the wrong time, before we have had a chance to build up the necessary receptivity and when new information is therefore as useless and fugitive as necklace beads without a connecting chain.
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Arguments are like eels: however logical, they may slip from the minds weak grasp unless fixed there by imagery and style.
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The company of certain people may excite our generosity and sensitivity, while that of others awakens our competitiveness and envy.
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Maturity: knowing where you're crazy, trying to warn others of the fact and striving to keep yourself under control.
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Wealth is not an absolute. It is relative to desire. Every time we yearn for something we cannot afford, we grow poorer, whatever our resources. And every time we feel satisfied with what we have, we can be counted as rich, however little we may actually possess.
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Anxiety is the handmaiden of contemporary ambition.
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It's hard loving those who don't much like themselves: If you're so great, why would you think I'm so great.
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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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There's a whole category of people who miss out by not allowing themselves to be weird enough.
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It wasn't only fanatics and drunkards who began conversations with strangers in public.
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Our capacity to draw happiness from aesthetic objects or material goods in fact seems critically dependent on our first satisfying a more important range of emotional or psychological needs, among them the need for understanding, for love, expression and respect.
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We need objects to remind us of the commitments we've made. That carpet from Morocco reminds us of the impulsive, freedom-loving side of ourselves we're in danger of losing touch with. Beautiful furniture gives us something to live up to. All designed objects are propaganda for a way of life.
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Why, then, if expensive things cannot bring us remarkable joy, are we so powerfully drawn to them?
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Dreams reveal we never quite get 'over' anything: it's all still in there somewhere.
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The desire for high status is never stronger than in situations where ordinary life fails to answer a median need for dignity and comfort.
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Out of the millions of people we live among, most of whom we habitually ignore and are ignored by in turn, there are always a few that hold hostage our capacity for happiness, whom we could recognize by their smell alone and whom we would rather die than be without.
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