The architecture of Happiness

“Our sadness won’t be of the searing kind but more like a blend of joy and melancholy: joy at the perfection we see before us, melancholy at an awareness of how seldom we are sufficiently blessed to encounter anything of its kind. The flawless object throws into perspective the mediocrity that surrounds it. We are reminded of the way we would wish things always to be and of how incomplete our lives remain.”
― Alain de Botton, The Architecture of Happiness

Isaac Levitan (Lithuanian-Russian, 1860–1900)

Fog over Water, c. 1895.