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.
Alain De BottonRead
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.
Interpretation
Travel can be unproductive if we lack the readiness to absorb new experiences.
In this quote, Alain De Botton highlights the importance of being mentally and emotionally prepared to truly appreciate and learn from travel experiences. Without this readiness, new insights gained during travels can feel disconnected and insignificant, akin to beads that lack the chain to hold them together.
In practice
During a travel seminar, one might mention this quote to emphasize the importance of mental readiness for cultural experiences.
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.
Taking architecture seriously therefore makes some singular and strenuous demands upon us...It means conceding that we are inconveniently vulnerable to the colour of our wallpaper and that our sense of purpose may be derailed by an unfortunate bedspread
The more closely we analyze what we consider 'sexy,' the more clearly we will understand that eroticism is the feeling of excitement we experience at finding another human being who shares our values and our sense of the meaning of existence.
Good books put a finger on emotions that are deeply our own - but that we could never have described on our own.
The challenge of modern relationships: how to prove more interesting than the other's smartphone.
It is the most ambitious and driven among us who are the most sorely in need of having our reckless hopes dampened through immersive dousings in the darkness which religions have explored. This is a particular priority for secular Americans, perhaps the most anxious and disappointed people on earth, for their nation infuses them with the most extreme hopes about what they may be able to achieve in their working lives and relationships.
Most people who travel look only at what they are directed to look at. Great is the power of the guidebook maker, however ignorant.
Travel, which had once charmed him, seemed, at length, unendurable, a business of color without substance, a phantom chase after his own dream's shadow.
I urge you to travel - as far and as widely as possible. Sleep on floors if you have to.
Traveling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends
One doesn't come to Italy for niceness," was the retort; "one comes for life. Buon giorno! Buon giorno!
When you're travelling, you are what you are right there and then. People don't have your past to hold against you. No yesterdays on the road.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.