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 BottonI 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 BottonIt is perhaps when our lives are at their most problematic that we are likely to be most receptive to beautiful things.
Alain de BottonIt's clear to me that there is no good reason for many philosophy books to sound as complicated as they do.
Alain de Botton