“We mock those who fake aesthetic enthusiasms in hopes of gaining respect. But the opposite tendency is the more poignant, whereby we repress our true passions in order not to seem peculiar. We may stay quiet about our affection for daffodils, for instance, until a reading of Wordsworth endorses the sentiment. We may suppress our fondness for ritualized, solemn snow-viewing until the merit of the practice is confirmed by Natsume Soseki.”

“It is books, poems and paintings which often give us the confidence to take seriously feelings in ourselves that we might otherwise never have thought to acknowledge. Oscar Wilde referred to this phenomenon when he quipped that there was no fog in London before Whistler started painting the Thames.”
– Alain de Botton, The Architecture of Happiness, p.262