We depend on our surroundings obliquely to embody the moods and ideas we respect and then to remind us of them. We look to our buildings to hold us, like a kind of psychological mould, to a helpful vision of ourselves. We arrange around us material forms which communicate to us what we need — but are at constant risk of forgetting what we need — within. We turn to wallpaper, benches, paintings and streets to staunch the disappearance of our true selves.
Alain de BottonWhile a common reaction to seeing a thing of beauty is to want to buy it, our real desire may be not so much to own what we find beautiful as to lay permanent claim to the inner qualities it embodies.
Owning such an object may help us realise our ambition of absorbing the virtues to which it alludes, but we ought not to presume that those virtues will automatically or effortlessly begin to rub off on us through tenure. Endeavouring to purchase something we think beautiful may in fact be the most unimaginative way of dealing with the longing it excites in us, just as trying to sleep with someone may be the bluntest response to a feeling of love.
What we seek, at the deepest level, is inwardly to resemble, rather than physically possess, the objects and places that touch us through their beauty.
One kind of good book should leave you asking: how did the author know that about me?
Alain de BottonTags: books writing self authors
Rather than getting more spoilt with age, as difficulties pile up, epiphanies of gratitude abound.
Alain de BottonTags: gratitude difficulties epiphanies
If one felt successful, there'd be so little incentive to be successful.
Alain de BottonTags: success self-perception feelings
You normally have to be bashed about a bit by life to see the point of daffodils, sunsets and uneventful nice days.
Alain de BottonTags: life beauty hardships ordinary-days
Most of what makes a book 'good' is that we are reading it at the right moment for us.
Alain de BottonTags: reading books timing right-moment
What is a snob? A snob is anybody who takes a small part of you and uses that to come to a complete vision of who you are. That is snobbery.
Alain de BottonYou have to be quite heavily invested in someone to do them the honour of telling them you're annoyed with them.
Alain de BottonTags: relationships annoyance
Those who divorce aren't necessarily the most unhappy, just those neatly able to believe their misery is caused by one other person.
Alain de BottonTags: misery unhappiness divorce
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