Sublime

É como se lhe tivesse sido dado acesso a uma versão dele próprio que há muito julgava morta.

was spurred on by an uncertain longing to be transported from a boring daily life to a marvellous world.’

Books retain a role in offering us consoling reminders that we are not alone with the humiliating and peculiar difficulties imposed by our unavoidable possession of a sex drive.

At the core of the tender person’s outlook is a simple-sounding but love-sustaining fact: they treat the other as no less fragile, flawed, and sensitive than they remember themselves to be—only around slightly different things.

It lies in the power of certain great works of art, however, to induce us to revisit what we think we already understand and to reveal new, neglected or submerged enchantments beneath a familiar exterior.

Meanwhile, in the other camp, public philosophers such as Alain de Botton have sometimes risked derision to publish books or establish institutions designed to take a dry and analytical field back to its humanitarian roots. They have dared to remind us how the great thinkers of history might help us navigate our modern world contentedly and with mi