“It is perhaps when our lives are at their most problematic that we are likely to be most receptive to beautiful things.”

—  Alain de Botton, book The Architecture of Happiness

Source: The Architecture of Happiness

Last update Nov. 14, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "It is perhaps when our lives are at their most problematic that we are likely to be most receptive to beautiful things." by Alain de Botton?
Alain de Botton photo
Alain de Botton146
Swiss writer 1969

Related quotes

Simon Sinek photo

“Most of us live our lives by accident—we live as it happens. Fullfillment comes when we live our lives on purpose.”

Simon Sinek (1973) British/American author and motivational speaker

Source: Together is Better: A Little Book of Inspiration

Adrienne Rich photo

“The connections between and among women are the most feared, the most problematic, and the most potentially transforming force on the planet.”

Adrienne Rich (1929–2012) American poet, essayist and feminist

Andy Warhol photo

“The most beautiful thing in Tokyo is McDonald's. The most beautiful thing in Stockholm is McDonald's. The most beautiful thing in Florence is McDonald's. Peking and Moscow don't have anything beautiful yet.”

Andy Warhol (1928–1987) American artist

Source: 1975, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (1975), Ch. 4: Beauty

Jordan Peterson photo

“When you think that the ground of consciousness is the most complex thing we know of, then it's not so unsophisticated to assume that the most complex thing that there might be is like that. Or at least that's as good as we can do with our imaginations. I don't think that's unsophisticated.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Other

Bill Bryson photo

“Of all the things I am not very good at, living in the real world is perhaps the most outstanding.”

Bill Bryson (1951) American author

Source: I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America after Twenty Years Away

Herbert Read photo

“Art is most simply and most usually defined as an attempt to create pleasing forms. Such forms satisfy our sense of beauty and the sense of beauty is satisfied when we are able to appreciate a unity or harmony of formal relations among our sense-perceptions.”

Herbert Read (1893–1968) English anarchist, poet, and critic of literature and art

The Meaning of Art, London : Faber & Faber, 1931
Other Quotes

Milan Kundera photo

“There is a certain part of all of us that lives outside of time. Perhaps we become aware of our age only at exceptional moments and most of the time we are ageless.”

Milan Kundera (1929–2023) Czech author of Czech and French literature

John Gray photo

“We are not authors of our lives; we are not even part-authors of the events that mark us most deeply. Nearly everything that is most important in our lives is unchosen. The time and place we are born, our parents, the first language we speak - these are chance, not choice. It is the casual drift of things that shapes our most fateful relationships. The life of each of us is a chapter of accidents.”

John Gray book Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals

The Vices of Morality: The fetish of choice (p. 109-110)
Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals (2002)

Kelley Armstrong photo

“Another werewolf thing. Like most animals, we spent a large part of our lives engaged in the three Fs of basic survival. Feeding, fighting and… reproduction.”

Kelley Armstrong book Stolen

Source: Stolen

Mark Helprin photo

“He moved like a dancer, which is not surprising; a horse is a beautiful animal, but it is perhaps most remarkable because it moves as if it always hears music.”

Mark Helprin book Winter's Tale

Source: Winter's Tale

Related topics