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Edmund Burke
De Botton sees the sublime as pointing to the existence of a higher power. He calls this God, referring to the traditional Abrahamic God who supposedly performed many of his greatest acts in the Sinai desert and appears in the Biblical book of Job, but also to the very idea of a supernatural creator with absolute power over the Earth.
God Quotes in The Art of Travel
The The Art of Travel quotes below are all either spoken by God or refer to God. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 6 Quotes
The world may appear illogical to you, but it does not follow that it is illogical per se. Our lives are not the measure of all things: consider sublime places for a reminder of human insignificance and frailty.
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In his discussion of the Book of Job from the Old Testament, this is how de Botton summarizes God’s ultimate lesson to Job. After Job lost most of his possessions and his eldest son to a string of natural disasters, he asks God what he could have possibly done to deserve his fate, but God tells him that he cannot fathom the workings of the universe and, as proof, asks him to ponder the vast wonders of nature that later became associated with the sublime. De Botton sees God’s message as reflecting the universal truth that humans have much less Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Comm
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God Character Timeline in The Art of Travel
The timeline below shows where the character God appears in The Art of Travel. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 6: On the Sublime
...landscape suggests that something greater than humans built the Earth. According to the Abrahamic religions, God supposedly spent significant time there—and de Botton thinks that any traveler in the desert there...
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Indeed, many early theorists of the sublime saw it as proof of God’s existence, and de Botton sees a connection between the rise of the sublime as a...
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One Biblical book particularly connects God to the sublime; in it, “a righteous but desperate man” asks God why he suffers,...
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...tell him that his sin caused his misfortune, but Job denies that he has sinned. God replies, showing Job his ignorance and impotence through questions like “where was thou when I...
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De Botton thinks that God’s answer to Job also holds value for secular people, for the sublime can still lead...
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Chapter 8: On Possessing Beauty
...summarized his mission as an attempt to “direct people’s attention accurately to the beauty of God’s work in the material universe.” He imagined two people, one a sketcher and one not,...
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