Alain de Botton Hints Quotations

The origins and travels of our purchases remain matters of indifference, although to the more imaginative at least a slight dampness at the bottom of a carton, or an obscure code printed along a computer cable, may hint at processes of manufacture and transport nobler and more mysterious, more worthy of wonder and study, than the very goods themselves.

A lump rises in our throat at the sight of beauty from an implicit knowledge that the happiness it hints at is the exception.