This is De Botton’s term for spaces inhabited by those in transit, from the roadside rest stop he visits between London and Manchester to the planes, ships, and trains that travelers use to reach foreign lands. He argues that such liminal (in-between) spaces can offer the excitement of anticipated travel as well as a poetic, comfortable loneliness, in which a traveler is surrounded by other people who feel the same isolation and an atmosphere that mirrors that sentiment.
Traveling Places Quotes in The Art of Travel
The The Art of Travel quotes below are all either spoken by Traveling Places or refer to Traveling Places. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 2
Quotes
The twenty-four-hour diner, the station waiting room and the motel are sanctuaries for those who have, for noble reasons, failed to find a home in the ordinary world—those whom Baudelaire might have dignified with the honorific poets.
Related Characters:Alain de Botton (speaker), Edward Hopper, Charles Baudelaire
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
51
Explanation and Analysis:
De Botton summarizes the beauty he sees in the transient places of travel, which Edward Hopper depicted in his paintings of American life on the road. Places like diners, motels, and station waiting rooms exist only to help people transition from one place to another—it is as though they are not true places in themselves but merely stops along the road from point A to point B. The people one finds there—and whom Hopper paints—are accordingly themselves in a state of transition, and de Botton suggests that these traveling places thus often reflect travelers’ solitude and uncertainty. He concludes that 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. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque error. Possimus corrupti soluta. Qui aut a. Rerum voluptas debitis. Voluptatem accusantium est. Mollitia eaque ipsa. Perferendis
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Traveling Places Term Timeline in The Art of Travel
The timeline below shows where the term Traveling Places appears in The Art of Travel. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 2: On Traveling Places
...something it moves de Botton, who begins to think of “other equally and unexpectedly poetic traveling places —airport terminals, harbours, train stations, and motels.”
(full context)
...realm.” Baudelaire also flocked to “harbours, docks, railway stations, trains, ships, and hotel rooms,” transient traveling places that filled him with the nostalgia and thrill of departure.
(full context)
In addition to traveling places , Baudelaire also loved “machines of motion,” and especially ships, which he found a technological...
(full context)
...the rigours, the cold abstinence, the selfish ease of ordinary society.” De Botton agrees, seeing traveling places as an alternative to the routine drudgery of contemporary everyday life.
(full context)