“The role of beauty for human happiness is not restricted to those moments in which one is consciously looking at beautiful things. Beauty is active even at those times when one’s attention is directed to completely different things. The beauty of the environment in which one lives–one’s house, even if it is very simple…the view from one’s house, both near and far; the architectural beauty of the neighboring houses; the beauty of the sun that shines into the house, and of the shadow cast by a tree–all this nourishes the soul even of the simplest man or woman, entering into their pores even when they are not concentrating on it. And this applies to every situation in life. In the past when a person worked with his hands, bought and sold in the market, and celebrated feasts, he was surrounded by the poetry of these existential situations. This poetry nourished him. He no doubt lacked the understanding of poetry that a poet has when he observed these situations and consciously enjoys them. The simplest person did not look at these situations but took them for granted, living in them unselfconsciously. Their poetry nourished his spirit, irrespective of how far he consciously grasped it.”

“One should not make the mistake of assuming that because many people today apparently lack any sensitivity to beauty, beauty is not a fundamental source of happiness, even for the simplest people. One should not forget the role that beauty plays for the happiness of people–of all people. The atrophy of this sensitivity is a terrible loss, and this ought not to be interpreted as a progress that modern man has made in the industrialized world. We should seek to understand the consequences of man of the withdrawal of this spiritual nourishment. The fact that one does not know the causes of a sickness is no proof that one is not sick.”

“People have grown accustomed to the elimination of the poetry of the world, to the mechanization of life, to the expulsion of beauty; but this does not make any less real the influence on human happiness of this destruction of the charm of the organic, truly human life. People have grown accustomed today to the din to which they are exposed on the street and at home by the many machines that they use; but this does not mean that our nerves escape unscathed from all this cacophony.”

Dietrich von Hildebrand, Beauty in the Light of Redemption, 79-80.