“It is in books, poems, paintings which often give us the confidence to take seriously feelings in ourselves that we might otherwise never have thought to acknowledge.”

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 in books, poems, paintings which often give us the confidence to take seriously feelings in ourselves that we mig…" by Alain de Botton?
Alain de Botton photo
Alain de Botton 146
Swiss writer 1969

Related quotes

Daniel Radcliffe photo

“This has given me a feeling of confidence, which I might not have had otherwise.”

Daniel Radcliffe (1989) English actor

(on Harry Potter experience) http://www.movietome.com/people/86509/daniel-radcliffe/trivia.html

“The feeling of having free will is deep in us and we are reluctant to give it up for ourselves—but we are often willing to deny it to others!”

Richard Hamming (1915–1998) American mathematician and information theorist

The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn (1991)

Thomas Mann photo
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg photo
Henry David Thoreau photo
Werner Herzog photo

“It is my duty because this might be the inner chronicle of what we are, and we have to articulate ourselves. Otherwise we would be cows in the field.”

Werner Herzog (1942) German film director, producer, screenwriter, actor and opera director

Herzog on Herzog (2002)

Albert Einstein photo

“This feeling mercifully mitigates the sense of responsibility which so easily becomes paralyzing, and it prevents us from taking ourselves and other people too seriously; it conduces to a view of life in which humor, above all, has its due place.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

1930s, Mein Weltbild (My World-view) (1931)
Context: In human freedom in the philosophical sense I am definitely a disbeliever. Everybody acts not only under external compulsion but also in accordance with inner necessity. Schopenhauer's saying, that "a man can do as he will, but not will as he will," has been an inspiration to me since my youth up, and a continual consolation and unfailing well-spring of patience in the face of the hardships of life, my own and others'. This feeling mercifully mitigates the sense of responsibility which so easily becomes paralyzing, and it prevents us from taking ourselves and other people too seriously; it conduces to a view of life in which humor, above all, has its due place.

Marguerite Duras photo
Daniel Defoe photo

Related topics