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Let Us Be Grateful To People Who Make Us Happy, They Are The Charming Gardeners Who Make Our Souls Blossom.
-Marcel Proust
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Let Us Be Grateful

Marcel Proust
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Let Us Be Grateful To People Who Make Us Happy, They Are The Charming Gardeners Who Make Our Souls Blossom.

Understanding the Quote: "let us be grateful to people who make us happy, they are..."

This quote by Marcel Proust reflects deeply on the theme of friendship. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Friendship, Happiness, Happy, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how Marcel Proust interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About Marcel Proust

Marcel Proust is celebrated for insightful thoughts on friendship and happiness. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

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Topic
Friendship
Happiness
Happy
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There Are Optical Illusions In Time As Well As Space.
Space
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The Charms Of The Passing Woman Are Generally In Direct Ratio To The Swiftness Of Our Passage.
Literature
Swiftness
Charm
So Long As I Know What's Boiling In My Pot I Don't Bother My Head About What's In Other People's.
Long
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After A Certain Age Our Memories Are So Intertwined With One Another That What We Are Thinking Of, The Book We Are Reading, Scarcely Matters Any More. We Have Put Something Of Ourselves Everywhere, Everything Is Fertile, Everything Is Dangerous, And We Can Make Discoveries No Less Precious Than In Pascal's Pensées In An Advertisement For Soap.
Memories
Reading
Book
There Are People Whose Faces Assume An Unaccustomed Beauty And Majesty The Moment They Cease To Look Out Of Their Eyes.
Eye
People
Looks
Human Altruism Which Is Not Egoism, Is Sterile.
Egoism
Humanitarianism
Humans
Nous Sommes Tous Oblige S, Pour Rendre La Re Alite Supportable, D'entretenir En Nous Quelques Petites Folies. We Must All Indulge In A Few Follies If We Are To Make Reality Bearable.
Reality
Indulge In
Bearable
Do Not Wait For Life. Do Not Long For It. Be Aware, Always And At Every Moment, That The Miracle Is In The Here And Now.
Long
Waiting
Miracle
The Features Of Our Face Are Hardly More Than Gestures Which Force Of Habit Made Permanent. Nature, Like The Destruction Of Pompeii, Like The Metamorphosis Of A Nymph Into A Tree, Has Arrested Us In An Accustomed Movement.
Nature
Nymphs
Tree
In Love, Happiness Is An Abnormal State.
Abnormal
States
The True Voyage Of Discovery Is Not A Journey To A New Place; It Is Learning To See With New Eyes.
Eye
Journey
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You Know Balbec So Well - Do You Have Friends In The Area?' I Have Friends Wherever There Are Companies Of Trees, Wounded But Not Vanquished, Which Huddle Together With Touching Obstinacy To Implore An Inclement And Pitiless Sky.' That Is Not What I Meant,' Interrupted My Father, As Obstinate As The Trees And As Pitiless As The Sky.
Father
Sky
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For Women Who Do Not Love Us, As For The "disappeared", Knowing That We No Longer Have Any Hope Does Not Prevent Us Form Continuing To Wait. We Live On Our Guard, On Watch; Women Whose Son Has Gone Asea On A Dangerous Exploration Imagine At Any Minute, Although It Has Long Been Certain That He Has Perished, That He Will Enter, Miraculously Saved, And Healthy.
Love
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The Great Renunciation Of Old Age As It Prepared For Death, Wraps Itself Up In Its Chrysalis, Which May Be Observed At The End Of Lives That Are At All Prolonged, Even In Old Lovers Who Have Lived For One Another, In Old Friends Bound By The Closest Ties Of Mutual Sympathy, Who, After A Certain Year, Cease To Make The Necessary Journey Or Even To Cross The Street To See One Another, Cease To Correspond, And Know That They Will Communicate No More In This World.
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The Character We Exhibit In The Latter Half Of Our Life Need Not Necessarily Be, Though It Often Is, Our Original Character, Developed Further, Dried Up, Exaggerated, Or Diminished. It Can Be Its Exact Opposite, Like A Suit Worn Inside Out.
Character
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Love Is Not Vain Because It Is Frustrated, But Because It Is Fulfilled. The People We Love Turn To Ashes When We Posess Them.
Love Is
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Are Not The Thoughts Of The Dying Often Turned Towards The Practical, Painful, Obscure, Visceral Aspect, Towards The "seamy Side" Of Death Which Is, As It Happens, The Side That Death Actually Presents To Them And Forces Them To Feel, And Which Far More Closely Resembles A Crushing Burden, A Difficulty In Breathing, A Destroying Thirst, Than The Abstract Idea To Which We Are Accustomed To Give The Name Of Death?
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Death
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But,instead Of What Our Imagination Makes Us Suppose And Which We Worthless Try To Discover,life Gives Us Something That We Could Hardly Imagine.
Imagination
Giving
Trying
Griefs, At The Moment When They Change Into Ideas, Lose Some Of Their Power To Injure Our Heart.
Grief
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And Wasn't My Mind Also Like Another Crib In The Depths Of Which I Felt I Remained Ensconced, Even In Order To Watch What Was Happening Outside? When I Saw An External Object, My Awareness That I Was Seeing It Would Remain Between Me And It, Lining It With A Thin Spiritual Border That Prevented Me From Ever Directly Touching Its Substance; It Would Volatize In Some Way Before I Could Make Contact With It, Just As An Incandescent Body Brought Near A Wet Object Never Touches Its Moisture Because It Is Always Preceded By A Zone Of Evaporation.
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Aristocracy Is A Relative Thing. And There Are Plenty Of Out-of-the-way Places Where The Son Of An Upholsterer Is The Arbiter Of Fashion And Reigns Over A Court Like Any Young Prince Of Wales.
Fashion
Son
Aristocracy
We Scornfully Decline, Because Of One Whom We Love And Who Will Some Day Be Of So Little Account, To See Another Who Is Of No Account To-day, With Whom We Shall Be In Love To-morrow, With Whom We Might, Perhaps, Had We Consented To See Her Now, Have Fallen In Love A Little Earlier And Who Would Thus Have Put A Term To Our Present Sufferings, Bringing Others, It Is True, In Their Place.
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Littles
Might
The Fact Of The Matter Is That, Since We Are Determined Always To Keep Our Feelings To Ourselves, We Have Never Given Any Thought To The Manner In Which We Should Express Them. And Suddenly There Is Within Us A Strange And Obscene Animal Making Itself Heard, Whose Tones May Inspire As Much Alarm In The Person Who Receives The Involuntary, Elliptical And Almost Irresistible Communication Of One's Defect Or Vice As Would The Sudden Avowal Indirectly And Outlandishly Proffered By A Criminal Who Can No Longer Refrain From Confessing To A Murder Of Which One Had Never Imagined Him To Be Guilty.
Communication
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We Are All Of Us Obliged, If We Are To Make Reality Endurable, To Nurse A Few Little Follies In Ourselves.
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My Destination Is No Longer A Place, Rather A New Way Of Seeing.
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Destination
New Ways
Which Of Course Is Followed By: For Those Who Have Awareness, A Hint Is Quite Enough. For The Multitudes Of Heedless Mere Knowledge Is Useless. Haji Bektash Veli We Don't Receive Wisdom; We Must Discover It For Ourselves After A Journey That No One Can Take For Us Or Spare Us.
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Journey
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Existence Is Of Little Interest Save On Days When The Dust Of Realities Is Mingled With Magic Sand.
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Dust
Magic
Our Words Are, As A General Rule, Filled By The People To Whom We Address Them With A Meaning Which Those People Derive From Their Own Substance, A Meaning Widely Different From That Which We Had Put Into The Same Words When We Uttered Them.
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We Exist Only By Virtue Of What We Possess, We Possess Only What Is Really Present To Us, And Many Of Our Memories, Our Moods, Our Ideas Sail Away On A Voyage Of Their Own Until They Are Lost To Sight! Then We Can No Longer Take Them Into Account In The Total Which Is Our Personality. But They Know Of Secret Paths By Which To Return To Us.
Memories
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Error, By Force Of Contrast, Enhances The Triumph Of Truth.
Errors
Triumph
Force
And Indeed When We Are No Longer In Love With Women Whom We Meet After Many Years, Is There Not The Abyss Of Death Between Them And Ourselves, Just As Much As If They Were No Longer Of This World, Since The Fact That We Are No Longer In Love Makes The People That They Were Or The Person That We Were Then As Good As Dead?
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A Collection Of Bad Love Songs, Tattered From Overuse, Has To Touch Us Like A Cemetery Or A Village. So What If The Houses Have No Style, If The Graves Are Vanishing Under Tasteless Ornaments And Inscriptions? Before An Imagination Sympathetic And Respectful Enough To Conceal Momentarily Its Aesthetic Disdain, That Dust May Release A Flock Of Souls, Their Beaks Holding The Still Verdant Dreams That Gave Them An Inkling Of The Next World And Let Them Rejoice Or Weep In This World.
Dream
Song
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Man Is The Creature That Cannot Emerge From Himself, That Knows His Fellows Only In Himself; When He Asserts The Contrary, He Is Lying.
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Men
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For Although We Know That The Years Pass, That Youth Gives Way To Old Age, That Fortunes And Thrones Crumble (even The Most Solid Among Them) And That Fame Is Transitory, The Manner In Which—by Means Of A Sort Of Snapshot—we Take Cognisance Of This Moving Universe Whirled Along By Time, Has The Contrary Effect Of Immobilising It.
Moving
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There Is No More Ridiculous Custom Than The One That Makes You Express Sympathy Once And For All On A Given Day To A Person Whose Sorrow Will Endure As Long As His Life. Such Grief, Felt In Such A Way Is Always Present, It Is Never Too Late To Talk About It, Never Repetitious To Mention It Again.
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We Think And Name In One World, We Live And Feel In Another.
Art
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Love Is Space And Time Measured By The Heart.
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It Is Up To My Spirit To Find The Truth. But How? Grave Uncertainty, Each Time The Spirit Feels Beyond Its Own Comprehension; Whenit, The Explorer, Is Altogether To Obscure Land That It Must Search And Where All Its Baggage Is Of No Use. To Search? That Is Not All: To Create.
Creativity
Knowledge
Land
She's Got Feet Like Boats, Whiskers Like An American, And Her Undies Are Filthy.
Feet
Boat
Undies
As To The Pretty Girls Who Went Past, From The Day On Which I Had First Known That Their Cheeks Could Be Kissed, I Had Become Curious About Their Souls. And The Universe Had Appeared To Me More Interesting.
Girl
Women
Past
An Hour Is Not Merely An Hour, It Is A Vase Full Of Scents And Sounds And Projects And Climates.
Sound
Climate
Scent
Most Of The Supposed Expressions Of Our Feelings Merely Relieve Us Of Them By Drawing Them Out Of Us In An Indistinct Form That Does Not Teach Us To Know Them.
Expression
Drawing
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L'adulte' Re Introduit L'esprit Dans La Lettre Quebien Souvent Le Mariage E U" T Laisse E Morte. Adultery Breathes New Life Into Marriages Which Have Been Left For Dead.
New Life
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Breathe
La Me Decine A Fait Quelques Petits Progre' S Dans Ses Connaissances Depuis Molie' Re, Mais Aucun Dans Son Vocabulaire. Medicine Has Made A Few, Small Advances In Knowledge Since Molie' R E, But None In Its Vocabulary.
Son
Vocabulary
Medicine
The Inertia Of The Mind Urges It To Slide Down The Easy Slope Of Imagination, Rather Than To Climb The Steep Slope Of Introspection.
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We Have Nothing To Fear And A Great Deal To Learn From Trees, That Vigorours And Pacific Tribe Which Without Stint Produces Strengthening Essences For Us, Soothing Balms, And In Whose Gracious Company We Spend So Many Cool, Silent, And Intimate Hours.
Fear
Learning
Essence
There Is No Doubt That A Person's Charms Are Less Frequently A Cause Of Love Than A Remark Such As: 'no, This Evening I Shan't Be Free'.
Doubt
Evening
Causes
It Is Desire That Engenders Belief And If We Fail As A Rule To Take This Into Account, It Is Because Most Of The Desires That Create Beliefs End Only With Our Own Life.
Desire
Belief
Failing
I Wished To See Storms Only On Those Coasts Where They Raged With Most Violence.
Storm
Violence
Coast
We Can Sometimes Find A Person Again, But We Cannot Abolish Time. And So On Until The Unforeseen Day, Gloomy As A Winter Night, When One No Longer Seeks That Girl, Or Any Other, When To Find Her Would Actually Scare One. For One No Longer Feels That One Has Attractions Enough To Please, Or Strength Enough To Love. Not, Of Course, That One Is In The Strict Sense Of The Word Impotent. And As For Loving, One Would Love More Than Ever. But One Feels That It Is Too Big An Undertaking For The Little Strength One Has Left.
Girl
Winter
Night
We Say That The Hour Of Death Cannot Be Forecast, But When We Say This We Imagine That Hour As Placed In An Obscure And Distant Future. It Never Occurs To Us That It Has Any Connection With The Day Already Begun Or That Death Could Arrive This Same Afternoon, This Afternoon Which Is So Certain And Which Has Every Hour Filled In Advance.
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Grieving
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The Real Voyage Of Discovery Consists Not In Seeking New Landscapes, But In Having New Eyes.
Inspirational
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Positive
The Heart Does Not Lie.
Lying
Heart
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The True Paradises Are The Paradises That We Have Lost.
Philosophical
Paradise
Lost
The Tiny, Initial Clue ... By Allowing Us To Imagine What We Do Not Know, Stimulates A Desire For Knowledge.
Knowledge
Desire
Tiny
The Most Powerful Soporific Is Sleep Itself.
Powerful
Sleep
Most Powerful
There Is No Idea That Does Not Carry In Itself A Possible Refutation, No Word That Does Not Imply Its Opposite.
Opposites
Ideas
Doe
But When From A Long-distant Past Nothing Subsists, After The People Are Dead, After The Things Are Broken And Scattered, Taste And Smell Alone, More Fragile But More Enduring, More Unsubstantial, More Persistent, More Faithful, Remain Poised A Long Time, Like Souls, Remembering, Waiting, Hoping, Amid The Ruins Of All The Rest; And Bear Unflinchingly, In The Tiny And Almost Impalpable Drop Of Their Essence, The Vast Structure Of Recollection.
Past
Essence
Smell
L'adolescence Est Le Seul Temps O U' L'on Ait Appris Quelque Chose. Adolescence Is The Only Time When We Can Learn Something.
Adolescence
Only Time
I Cannot Express The Uneasiness Caused In Me By This Intrusion Of Mystery And Beauty Into A Room I Had At Last Filled With Myself To The Point Of Paying No More Attention To The Room Than To That Self. The Anesthetizing Influence Of Habit Having Ceased, I Would Begin To Have Thoughts, And Feelings, And They Are Such Sad Things.
Self
Feelings
Attention
Lies Are Essential To Humanity. They Are Perhaps As Important As The Pursuit Of Pleasure And Moreover Are Dictated By That Pursuit.
Life
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Lying
Many Years Have Passed Since That Night. The Wall Of The Staircase Up Which I Had Watched The Light Of His Candle Gradually Climb Was Long Ago Demolished. And In Myself, Too, Many Things Have Perished Which I Imagined Would Last For Ever, And New Ones Have Arisen, Giving Birth To New Sorrows And New Joys Which In Those Days I Could Not Have Foreseen, Just As Now The Old Are Hard To Understand.
Wall
Night
Light
We Live Not Alone But Chained To A Creature Of A Different Kingdom: Our Body.
Different
Body
Kingdoms
Le Temps Qui Change Les E" Tres Ne Modifie Pas L'image Que Nous Avons Garde E D'eux. Although Time Changes People, It Cannot Change The Image We Have Already Made Of Them.
People
Made
Avon
We Are Ordinarily So Indifferent To People That When We Have Invested One Of Them With The Possibility Of Giving Us Joy, Or Suffering, It Seems As If He Must Belong To Some Other Universe, He Is Imbued With Poetry.
Love
People
Giving
Lies Are Essential To Humanity.
Lying
Humanity
Essentials
Often It Is Just Lack Of Imagination That Keeps A Man From Suffering Very Much.
Men
Imagination
Suffering
The Only True Voyage Of Discovery, . . . Would Be Not To Visit Strange Lands But To Possess Other Eyes.
Life
Travel
Eye
Perhaps It Is Not-being That Is The True State, And All Our Dream Of Life Is Inexistent; But, If So, We Feel That These Phrases Of Music, These Conceptions Which Exist In Relation To Our Dream, Must Be Nothing Either. We Shall Perish, But We Have As Hostages These Divine Captives Who Will Follow And Share Our Fate. And Death In Their Company Is Somehow Less Bitter, Less Inglorious, Perhaps Even Less Probable.
Dream
Fate
Phrases
The Soldier Is Convinced That A Certain Indefinitely Extendable Time Period Is Accorded Him Before He Is Killed, The Burglar Before He Is Caught, Men In General, Before They Must Die. That Is The Amulet Which Preserves Individuals — And Sometimes Populations — Not From Danger, But From The Fear Of Danger, In Reality From The Belief In Danger, Which In Some Cases Allows Them To Brave It Without Being Brave. Such A Confidence, Just As Unfounded, Supports The Lover Who Counts On A Reconciliation, A Letter.
Reality
Men
Support
The Only Thing That Does Not Change Is That At Any And Every Time It Appears That There Have Been Great Changes.
History
Doe
Great Change
Perhaps The Immobility Of The Things That Surround Us Is Forced Upon Them By Our Conviction That They Are Themselves, And Not Anything Else, And By The Immobility Of Our Conceptions Of Them.
Conviction
Conception
Surround
We Do Not Receive Wisdom, We Must Discover It For Ourselves, After A Journey Through The Wilderness Which No One Else Can Make For Us, Which No One Can Spare Us, For Our Wisdom Is The Point Of View From Which We Come At Last To Regard The World. The Lives That You Admire, The Attitudes That Seem Noble To You, Have Not Been Shaped By A Paterfamilias Or A Schoolmaster, They Have Sprung From Very Different Beginnings, Having Been Influenced By Evil Or Commonplace That Prevailed Round Them. They Represent A Struggle And A Victory.
Attitude
Struggle
Journey
What An Abyss Of Uncertainty, Whenever The Mind Feels Overtaken By Itself; When It, The Seeker, Is At The Same Time The Dark Region Through Which It Must Go Seeking And Where All Its Equipment Will Avail It Nothing. Seek? More Than That: Create. It Is Face To Face With Something Which Does Not Yet Exist, Which It Alone Can Make Actual, Which It Alone Can Bring Into The Light Of Day.
Dark
Light
Mind
Things Don't Change, But By And By Our Wishes Change.
Friendship
Change
Perspective
I Have A Horror Of Sunsets; They're So Romantic, So Operatic.
Sunset
Emotion
Horror
It Comes So Soon, The Moment When There Is Nothing Left To Wait For.
Waiting
Moments
Left
The One Thing More Difficult Than Following A Regime Is Keeping From Imposing It On Others.
Discipline
Difficult
Following
Medicine Being A Compendium Of The Successive And Contradictory Mistakes Of Medical Practitioners, When We Summon The Wisest Of Them To Our Aid, The Chances Are That We May Be Relying On A Scientific Truth The Error Of Which Will Be Recognized In A Few Years Time.
Mistake
Errors
Doctors
We Do Not Receive Wisdom, We Must Discover It For Ourselves, After A Journey Through The Wilderness Which No One Else Can Make For Us, Which No One Can Spare Us, For Our Wisdom Is The Point Of View From Which We Come At Last To Regard The World.
Wisdom
Learning
Journey
For Everyone Who, Having No Artistic Sense-that Is To Say, No Submission To Subjective Reality-may Have The Knack Of Reasoning About Art Till Doomsday, Especially If He Be, In Addition, A Diplomat Or Financier In Contact With The 'realities' Of The Present Day, Is Only Too Ready To Believe Literature Is An Intellectual Game Which Is Destined To Gradually Be Abandoned As Time Goes On.
Art
Believe
Reality
...that Melancholy Which We Feel When We Cease To Obey Orders Which, From One Day To Another, Keep The Future Hidden, And Realise That We Have At Last Begun To Live In Real Earnest, As A Grown-up Person, The Life, The Only Life That Any Of Us Has At His Disposal.
Real
Order
One Day
Time, Which Changes People, Does Not Alter The Image We Have Retained Of Them.
Change
Time
People
Everything That Seems Imperishable Tends To Extinguishment.
Seems
If We Are To Make Reality Endurable, We Must All Nourish A Fantasy Or Two.
Reality
Two
Fantasy
Let A Prize Lower My Position, If It Causes Me To Be Read; That I Prefer Immediately To All The Honors.
Honor
Causes
Position
Time Passes, And Little By Little Everything That We Have Spoken In Falsehood Becomes True.
Time
Lying
Literature
People Do Not Die For Us Immediately, But Remain Bathed In A Sort Of Aura Of Life Which Bears No Relation To True Immortality But Through Which They Continue To Occupy Our Thoughts In The Same Way As When They Were Alive. It Is As Though They Were Traveling Abroad.
Death
Thinking
People
Life Is Extraordinarily Suave And Sweet With Certain Natural, Witty, Affectionate People Who Have Unusual Distinction And Are Capable Of Every Vice, But Who Make A Display Of None In Public And About Whom No One Can Affirm They Have A Single One. There Is Something Supple And Secret About Them. Besides, Their Perversity Gives Spice To Their Most Innocent Occupations, Such As Taking A Walk In The Garden At Night.
Witty
Sweet
Night
This Labour Of The Artist To Discover A Means Of Apprehending Beneath Matter And Experience, Beneath Words, Something Different From Their Appearance, Is Of An Exactly Contrary Nature To The Operation In Which Pride, Passion, Intelligence And Habit Are Constantly Engaged Within Us When We Spend Our Lives Without Self-communion, Accumulating As Though To Hide Our True Impressions, The Terminology For Practical Ends Which We Falsely Call Life.
Passion
Mean
Pride
In Summoning Even The Wisest Of Physicians To Our Aid, It Is Probably That He Is Relying Upon A Scientific "truth", The Error Of Which Will Become Obvious In Just A Few Years' Time.
Health
Medicine
Errors
I Was Not At All Worried About Finding My Doctor Boring; I Expected From Him, Thanks To An Art Of Which The Laws Escaped Me, That He Pronounce Concerning My Health An Indisputable Oracle By Consulting My Entrails.
Art
Law
Doctors
One Becomes Moral As Soon As One Is Unhappy.
Unhappy
Moral
When You Work To Please Others You Can't Succeed, But The Things You Do To Satisfy Yourself Stand A Chance Of Catching Someone's Interest.
Succeed
Chance
Catching
For A Long Time I Would Go To Bed Early. [fr., Longtemps, Je Me Suis Couche De Bonne Heure.]
Book
Long
Bed
People Don't Know When They Are Happy. They're Never So Unhappy As They Think They Are.
Thinking
People
Unhappy
In A Language Known To Us, We Have Substituted The Opacity Of The Sounds With The Transparence Of The Ideas. But A Language We Donot Know Is A Closed Place In Which The One We Love Can Deceive Us, Making Us, Locked Outside And Convulsed In Our Impotence, Incapable Of Seeing Or Preventing Anything.
Love
Ideas
Sound
The World Was Not Created Once And For All Time For Each Of Us Individually. There Are Added To It In The Course Of Our Life Things Of Which We Have Never Had Any Suspicion.
Teamwork
Literature
World
Even The Simple Act That We Call "going To Visit A Person Of Our Acquaintance" Is In Part An Intellectual Act. We Fill The Physical Appearance Of The Person We See With All The Notions We Have About Him, And In The Totality Of Our Impressions About Him, These Notions Play The Most Important Role.
Simple
Play
Intellectual
The Sight Of The Little Madeleine Had Recalled Nothing To My Mind Before I Tasted It...
Sight
Mind
Littles
...hard People Are Weak People Whom Nobody Wants, And The Strong, Caring Little Whether They Are Wanted Or Not, Have Alone That Meekness Which The Common Herd Mistake For Weakness.
Strong
Mistake
Caring
What Artists Call Posterity Is The Posterity Of The Work Of Art.
Art
Work
Posterity
Nobility Is Often No More Than The Inner Aspect Which Our Egotistical Feelings Assume When We Have Not Yet Named And Classified Them.
Feelings
Assuming
Egotistical
Illness Is The Most Heeded Of Doctors: To Goodness And Wisdom We Only Make Promises; Pain We Obey.
Pain
Health
Doctors
Now Are The Woods All Black, But Still The Sky Is Blue.
Blue
Sky
Black
What Barrier Is So Insurmountable As Silence?
Silence
Barriers
Insurmountable
A Little Tap At The Window, As Though Some Missile Had Struck It, Followed By A Plentiful, Falling Sound, As Light, Though, As If A Shower Of Sand Were Being Sprinkled From A Window Overhead; Then The Fall Spread, Took On An Order, A Rhythm, Became Liquid, Loud, Drumming, Musical, Innumerable, Universal. It Was The Rain
Rain
Fall
Light
Truth Is A Point Of View About Things.
Truth
Views
Truth Is
... But All The Feelings That Evoke In Us The Joy Or The Misfortune Of A Real Person Are Only Produced In Us Through The Intermediary Of An Image Of That Joy Or That Misfortune; The Ingeniousness Of The First Novelist Was In Understanding That, In The Apparatus Of Our Emotions, Since The Image Is The Only Essential Element, The Simplification Which Consists Of Purely And Simply Suppressing The Factual Characters Is A Definitive Improvement.
Real
Character
Joy
Poets Claim That We Recapture For A Moment The Self That We Were Long Ago When We Enter Some House Or Garden In Which We Used To Live In Our Youth. But These Are Most Hazardous Pilgrimages, Which End As Often In Disappointment As In Success. It Is In Ourselves That We Should Rather Seek To Find Those Fixed Places, Contemporaneous With Different Years.
Disappointment
Garden
Self
Having A Body Is In Itself The Greatest Threat To The Mind... The Body Encloses The Mind In A Fortress; Before Long The Mind Is Besieged On All Sides, And In The End The Mind Has To Give Itself Up.
Long
Giving
Mind
We May, Indeed, Say That The Hour Of Death Is Uncertain, But When We Say This We Think Of That Hour As Situated In A Vague And Remote Expanse Of Time; It Does Not Occur To Us That It Can Have Any Connexion With The Day That Has Already Dawned And Can Mean That Death -- Or Its First Assault And Partial Possession Of Us, After Which It Will Never Leave Hold Of Us Again -- May Occur This Very Afternoon, So Far From Uncertain, This Afternoon Whose Time-table, Hour By Hour, Has Been Settled In Advance.
Mean
Thinking
Doe
In Theory One Is Aware That The Earth Revolves, But In Practice One Does Not Perceive It, The Ground Upon Which One Treads Seems Not To Move, And One Can Live Undisturbed. So It Is With Time In One's Life.
Life
Time
Moving
The Reason Why A Work Of Genius Is Not Easily Admired From The First Is That The Man Who Has Created It Is Extraordinary, That Few Other Men Resemble Him. It Is His Work Itself That, By Fertilising The Rare Minds Capable Of Understanding It, Will Make Them Increase And Multiply.
Men
Understanding
Mind
True Variety Is In That Plenitude Of Real And Unexpected Elements, In The Branch Charged With Blue Flowers Thrusting Itself, Against All Expectations, From The Springtime Hedge Which Seems Already Too Full, While The Purely Formal Imitation Of Varietyis But Void And Uniformity, That Is, That Which Is Most Opposed To Variety.
Art
Real
Flower
Sometimes In This Life, Under The Stress Of An Exceptional Emotion, People Do Say What They Think.
Honesty
Stress
Thinking
The Fixity Of A Habit Is Generally In Direct Proportion To Its Absurdity.
Habit
Proportion
Absurdity
Love Is An Incurable Malady Like Those Pathetic States In Which Rheumatism Affords The Sufferer A Brief Respite Only To Be Replaced By Epileptiform Headaches.
Love
Headache
States
Habit Is, Of All The Plants Of Human Growth, The One That Has The Least Need Of Nutritious Soil In Order To Live, And Is The First To Appear On The Most Seemingly Barren Rock.
Rocks
Order
Growth
If Only For The Sake Of Elegance, I Try To Remain Morally Pure.
Luxury
Trying
Literature
With One Image He Would Make That Beauty Explode Into Me.
A Cathedral, A Wave Of A Storm, A Dancer's Leap, Never Turn Out To Be As High As We Had Hoped.
Motivational
Dance
Dancing
Instead Of Seeking New Landscapes, Develop New Eyes.
Wise
Wisdom
Eye
The Moments Of The Past Do Not Remain Still; They Retain In Our Memory The Motion Which Drew Them Towards The Future, Towards A Future Which Has Itself Become The Past, And Draw Us On In Their Train.
Memories
Past
Moments
Wisdom Cannot Be Imparted. Wisdom That A Wise Man Attempts To Impart Always Sounds Like Foolishness To Someone Else ... Knowledge Can Be Communicated, But Not Wisdom. One Can Find It, Live It, Do Wonders Through It, But One Cannot Communicate And Teach It.” - Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha "we Don't Receive Wisdom; We Must Discover It For Ourselves After A Journey That No One Can Take For Us Or Spare Us From.
Wise
Journey
Men
We Are At Times Too Ready To Believe That The Present Is The Only Possible State Of Things.
Believe
Open Minded
States
Perfume Is That Last And Best Reserve Of The Past, The One Which When All Out Tears Have Run Dry, Can Make Us Cry Again!
Running
Past
Tears
At The Heart Of Our Friendly Or Purely Social Relations, There Lurks A Hostility Momentarily Cured But Recurring By Fits And Starts.
Heart
Friendly
Fit
In The Sort Of Screen Dappled With Different States Of Mind Which My Consciousness Would Simultaneously Unfold While I Read, And Which Ranged From The Aspirations Hidden Deepest Within Me To The Completely Exterior Vision Of The Horizon Which I Had, At The Bottom Of The Garden, Before My Eyes, What Was First In Me, Innermost, The Constantly Moving Handle That Controlled The Rest, Was My Belief In The Philosophical Richness And Beauty Of The Book I Was Reading, And My Desire To Appropriate Them For Myself, Whatever That Book Might Be.
Moving
Book
Philosophical
Everything We Think Of As Great Has Come To Us From Neurotics. It Is They And They Alone Who Found Religions And Create Great Works Of Art. The World Will Never Realize How Much It Owes To Them And What They Have Suffered In Order To Bestow Their Gifts On It.
Depression
Art
Thinking
The Only Paradise Is Paradise Lost.
Paradise
Lost
When I Was Small Child, All That Belonged To Conservative Society Was Fashionable, And No Republicans Were Welcome In The Smartersalons. People Living In Such A Milieu Could Imagine That The Impossibility Of Ever Inviting An "opportunist", Much Less A "radical", Was A Thing That Would Last Forever, Like Gas Lamps And Horse-drawn Omnibuses. But Similar To Kaleidoscopes Turning From Time To Time, Society Successively Places In Various Ways Elements Which Were Thought To Be Immutable And Creates A New Composition.
Fashion
Horse
Children
In Reality, Every Reader Is, While Reading, The Reader Of His Own Self.
Reading
Reality
Self
However, The Danger In [socially Unbalanced Relationships] Is That The Subjection Of The Woman Temporarily Calms The Man's Jealousy But Also Renders It More Demanding. He Ends Up Making His Mistress Live Like Those Prisoners On Whom Light Is Shone Day And Night In Order For Them To Be Better Watched. And Things Always End In Tragedy.
Night
Men
Light
Our Vanity, Our Passions, Our Spirit Of Imitation, Our Abstract Intelligence, Our Habits Have Long Been At Work, And It Is The Task Of Art To Undo This Work Of Theirs, Making Us Travel Back In The Direction From Which We Have Come To The Depths Where What Has Really Existed Lies Unknown Within Us.
Art
Lying
Passion
Reading Is That Fruitful Miracle Of A Communication In The Midst Of Solitude.
Communication
Reading
Miracle
Words Do Not Change Their Meanings So Drastically In The Course Of Centuries As, In Our Minds, Names Do In The Course Of A Year Or Two.
Years
Names
Two
The Paradoxes Of Today Are The Prejudices Of Tomorrow, Since The Most Benighted And The Most Deplorable Prejudices Have Had Their Moment Of Novelty When Fashion Lent Them Its Fragile Grace.
Fashion
Grace
Prejudice
How Else Learn The Real, If Not By Inventing What Might Lie Outside It?
Real
Lying
Might
One Must Never Miss An Opportunity Of Quoting Things By Others Which Are Always More Interesting Than Those One Thinks Up Oneself.
Thinking
Opportunity
Interesting
The Sensitiveness Claimed By Neurotic Is Matched By Their Egotism: They Cannot Abide The Flaunting By Others Of The Sufferings To Which They Pay An Even Increasing Amount Of Attention In Themselves.
Suffering
Attention
Neurosis
People Wish To Learn To Swim And At The Same Time To Keep One Foot On The Ground.
Leadership
Sports
Time
Let But A Single Flash Of Reality -- The Glimpse Of A Woman From Afar Or From Behind -- Enable Us To Project The Image Of Beauty Before Our Eyes, And We Imagine That We Have Recognised It, Our Hearts Beat, And We Will Always Remain Half-persuaded That It Was She, Provided That The Woman Has Vanished: It Is Only If We Manage To Overtake Her That We Realise Our Mistake.
Mistake
Heart
Eye
Habit! That Skillful But Slow Arranger, Which Starts Out By Letting Our Spirit Suffer For Weeks In A Temporary State, But That Thespirit Is After All Happy To Discover, For Without Habit And Reduced To Its Own Resources, The Spirit Would Be Unable To Make Any Lodgings Seem Habitable.
Suffering
Would Be
Spirit
I Blame The Newspapers Because Every Day They Call Our Attention To Insignificant Things, While Three Or Four Times In Our Lives,we Read Books That Contain Essential Things. Once We Feverishly Tear The Band Of Paper Enclosing Our Newspapers, Things Should Change And We Should Find--i Do Not Know--the Pensées By Pascal!
Book
Knowledge
Insignificant Things
To The Pure All Things Are Pure!
Purity
Chastity
Confidence In Others
A Work Should Convey Its Entire Meaning By Itself, Imposing It On The Spectator Even Before He Knows What The Subject Is.
Art
Philosophy
History
We Shall See Later On That The Diversity Of The Forms Of Death That Circulate Invisibly Is The Cause Of The Peculiar Unexpectedness Of Obituary Notices In The Newspapers.
Death
Diversity
Peculiar
The Highest Praise Of God Consists In The Denial Of Him By The Atheist Who Finds Creation So Perfect That It Can Dispense With A Creator.
Atheist
Perfect
Denial
We Strive All The Time To Give Our Life Its Form, But We Do So By Copying Willy-nilly, Like A Drawing, The Features Of The Person That We Are And Not Of The Person We Should Like To Be.
Drawing
Giving
Identity
Our Intonations Contain Our Philosophy Of Life, What Each Of Us Is Constantly Telling Himself About Things.
Philosophy
Life Philosophy
Intonation
The Only True Voyage Would Be Not To Travel Through A Hundred Different Lands, But To See The Same Land Through A Hundred Different Pairs Of Eyes.
Eye
Land
Different
The Bonds Between Ourselves And Another Person Exists Only In Our Minds. Memory As It Grows Fainter Loosens Them, And Notwithstanding The Illusion By Which We Want To Be Duped And Which, Out Of Love, Friendship, Politeness, Deference, Duty, We Dupe Other People, We Exist Alone. Man Is The Creature Who Cannot Escape From Himself, Who Knows Other People Only In Himself, And When He Asserts The Contrary, He Is Lying.
Memories
Lying
Men
It Is Comforting When One Has A Sorrow To Lie In The Warmth Of One's Bed And There, Abandoning All Effort And All Resistance, To Bury Even One's Head Under The Cover, Giving One's Self Up To It Completely, Moaning Like Branches In The Autumn Wind. But There Is Still A Better Bed, Full Of Divine Odors. It Is Our Sweet, Our Profound, Our Impenetrable Friendship.
Sweet
War
Lying
The Human Plagiarism Which Is Most Difficult To Avoid, For Individuals... Is The Plagiarism Of Ourselves.
Individual
Plagiarism
Difficult
But To Ask Pity Of Our Body Is Like Discoursing In Front Of An Octopus, For Which Our Words Can Have No More Meaning Than The Sound Of The Tides, And With Which We Should Be Appalled To Find Ourselves Condemned To Live.
Octopus
Sound
Our Words
A Powerful Idea Communicates Some Of Its Strength To Him Who Challenges It.
Inspirational
Strength
Powerful
Every Reader Finds Himself. The Writer's Work Is Merely A Kind Of Optical Instrument That Makes It Possible For The Reader To Discern What, Without This Book, He Would Perhaps Never Have Seen In Himself.
Book
Reading
Kind
None Of Us Constitutes A Material Whole, Identical For Everyone, Which A Person Has Only To Go Look Up As Though We Were A Book Of Specifications Or A Last Testament; Our Social Personality Is A Creation Of The Minds Of Others. Even The Very Simple Act That We Call "seeing A Person We Know" Is In Part An Intellectual One. We Fill The Physical Appearance Of The Individual We See With All The Notions We Have About Him, And Of The Total Picture That We Form For Ourselves, These Notions Certainly Occupy The Greater Part.
Book
Simple
Personality
No Exile At The South Pole Or On The Summit Of Mont Blanc Separates Us More Effectively From Others Than The Practice Of A Hidden Vice.
Practice
Vices
Literature
...a Writer's Works, Like The Water In An Artesian Well, Mount To A Height Which Is In Proportion To The Depth To Which Suffering Has Penetrated His Soul.
Water
Soul
Suffering
We Must Never Be Afraid To Go Too Far, For Truth Lies Beyond.
Motivational
Success
Lying
According To A Charming Law Of Nature Which Is Evident Even In The Most Sophisticated Societies, We Live In Complete Ignorance Of Whatever We Love.
Ignorance
Law
Sophisticated
...the Nose Is Generally The Organ In Which Stupidity Is Most Readily Displayed.
Stupidity
Noses
Organs
That Which We Remember Of Our Conduct Is Ignored By Our Closest Neighbour; But That Which We Have Forgotten Having Said, Or Even What We Never Said, Will Cause Laughter Even Into The Next World.
Laughter
World
Next
Only Imagination And Belief Can Differentiate From The Rest Certain Objects, Certain People, And Can Create An Atmosphere.
Imagination
People
Atmosphere
This Love Of Ours, In So Far As It Is A Love For One Particular Creature, Is Not Perhaps A Very Real Thing, Since, Though Associations Of Pleasant Or Painful Musings Can Attach It For A Time To A Woman To The Extent Of Making Us Believe That It Has Been Inspired By Her In A Logically Necessary Way, If On The Other Hand We Detach Ourselves Deliberately Or Unconsciously From Those Associations, This Love, As Though It Were In Fact Spontaneous And Sprang From Ourselves Alone, Will Revive In Order To Bestow Itself On Another Woman.
Love
Real
Believe
It Seems That Certain Transcendental Realities Emit Rays To Which The Masses Are Sensitive. That Is How, For Example, When An Event Takes Place, When At The Front An Army Is In Danger, Or Defeated, Or Victorious, The Rather Obscure News Which The Cultivated Man Does Not Quite Understand, Excite In The Masses An Emotion Which Surprises Him And In Which, Once The Experts Have Informed Him Of The Actual Military Situation, He Recognizes The Populace's Perception Of That "aura" Surrounding Great Events And Visible For Hundreds Of Kilometers.
Military
War
Army
The Duty And The Task Of A Writer Are Those Of An Interpreter.
Tasks
Duty
Interpreter
If, I Can Someday See M. Claude Monet's Garden, I Feel Sure That I Shall See Something That Is Not So Much A Garden Of Flowers As Of Colours And Tones, Less An Old-fashioned Flower Garden Than A Colour Garden, So To Speak, One That Achieves An Effect Not Entirely Nature's, Because It Was Planted So That Only The Flowers With Matching Colours Will Bloom At The Same Time, Harmonized In An Infinite Stretch Of Blue Or Pink.
Nature
Flower
Garden
When I Went To Venice I Found That My Dream Had Become-incredibly, But Quite Simply-my Address.
Dream
Venice
Addresses
Every Reader, As He Reads, Is Actually The Reader Of Himself. The Writer's Work Is Only A Kind Of Optical Instrument He Provides The Reader So He Can Discern What He Might Never Have Seen In Himself Without This Book. The Reader's Recognition In Himself Of What The Book Says Is The Proof Of The Book's Truth.
Book
Might
Recognition
There Is In This World In Which Everything Wears Out, Everything Perishes, One Thing That Crumbles Into Dust, That Destroys Itself Still More Completely, Leaving Behind Still Fewer Traces Of Itself Than Beauty: Namely Grief.
Grief
Dust
Leaving
After A Certain Age, The More One Becomes Oneself, The More Obvious One's Family Traits Become.
Age
Certain
Obvious
It Is Not Because Other People Are Dead That Our Affection For Them Grows Faint, It Is Because We Ourselves Are Dying.
People
Dying
Literature
I Drank A Second Mouthful In Which I Find Nothing More Than In The First, Then A Third Which Gives Me Rather Less Than The Second. It Is Time To Stop; The Potion Is Losing Its Magic.
Giving
Magic
Firsts
For What We Suppose To Be Our Love Or Our Jealousy Is Never A Single, Continuous And Indivisible Passion. It Is Composed Of An Infinity Of Successive Loves, Of Different Jealousies, Each Of Which Is Ephemeral, Although By Their Uninterrupted Multiplicity They Give Us The Impression Of Continuity, The Illusion Of Unity.
Passion
Giving
Unity
The Only Possible Paradises Are Those We Have Lost
Paradise
Lost
All Our Final Decisions Are Made In A State Of Mind That Is Not Going To Last.
Entrepreneur
Decision
Luck
A Powerful Idea Communicates Some Of Its Power To The Man Who Contradicts It. Partaking Of The Universal Community Of Minds, It Infiltrates, Grafts Itself On To, The Mind Of Him Who It Refutes, Among Other Contiguous Ideas, With The Aid Of Which, Counter-attacking, He Complements And Corrects It; So That The Final Verdict Is Always To Some Extent The Work Of Both Parties To A Discussion.
Powerful
Party
Men
An Hour Or So Later He Received A Note From Odette. Swann Had Left His Cigarette Case At Her House. "if Only," She Wrote, "you Had Also Forgotten Your Heart! I Should Never Have Let You Have It Back.
Heart
House
Forgotten
Our Intellect Is Not The Most Subtle, The Most Powerful, The Most Appropriate, Instrument For Revealing The Truth. It Is Life That, Little By Little, Example By Example, Permits Us To See That What Is Most Important To Our Heart, Or To Our Mind, Is Learned Not By Reasoning But Through Other Agencies. Then It Is That The Intellect, Observing Their Superiority, Abdicates Its Control To Them Upon Reasoned Grounds And Agrees To Become Their Collaborator And Lackey.
Powerful
Heart
Intelligent
We Ought At Least, From Prudence, Never To Speak Of Ourselves, Because That Is A Subject On Which We May Be Sure That Other People's Views Are Never In Accordance With Our Own.
Views
People
May
... In Love, Barriers Cannot Be Destroyed From The Outside By The One To Whom The Cause Despair, No Matter What He Does; And It Isonly When He Is No Longer Concerned With Them That, Suddenly, As A Result Of Work Coming From Elsewhere, Accomplished Within The One Who Did Not Love Him, These Barriers, Formerly Attacked Without Success, Fall Futilely.
Love
Fall
Despair
Certain Favourite Roles Are Played By Us So Often Before The Public And Rehearsed So Carefully When We Are Alone That We Find It Easier To Refer To Their Fictitious Testimony Than To That Of A Reality Which We Have Almost Entirely Forgotten.
Reality
Roles
Forgotten
When We Have Passed A Certain Age, The Soul Of The Child We Were And The Souls Of The Dead From Whom We Have Sprung Come To Lavish On Us Their Riches And Their Spells.
Children
Soul
Age
For One Cannot Change, That Is To Say Become Another Person, While Continuing To Acquiesce To The Feelings Of The Person One No Longer Is.
Feelings
Different
Continuing
There Is Not A Woman In The World The Possession Of Whom Is As Precious As That Of The Truths Which She Reveals To Us By Causing Us To Suffer.
Truth
Suffering
World
For Every Sin There Is Forgiveness, And Especially For The Sins Of Youth.
Youth
Sin
What We Have Not Had To Decipher, To Elucidate By Our Own Efforts, What Was Clear Before We Looked At It, Is Not Ours. From Ourselves Comes Only That Which We Drag Forth From The Obscurity Which Lies Within Us, That Which To Others Is Unknown.
Lying
Effort
Obscurity
When We Are In Love, Our Love Is Too Big A Thing For Us To Be Able Altogether To Contain It Within Ourselves. It Radiates Towards The Loved One, Finds There A Surface Which Arrests It, Forcing It To Return To Its Starting-point, And It Is This Repercussion Of Our Own Feeling Which We Call The Other's Feelings And Which Charms Us More Then Than On Its Outward Journey Because We Do Not Recognise It As Having Originated In Ourselves.
Love Is
Journey
Feelings
I Had Long Since Given Up Trying To Extract From A Woman As It Were The Square Root Of Her Unknown Quantity, The Mystery Of Which A Mere Introduction Was Generally Enough To Dispel.
Women
Squares
Roots
Nine Tenths Of The Ills From Which Intelligent People Suffer Spring From Their Intellect.
Spring
Intelligent
People
I Find Very Reasonable The Celtic Belief That The Souls Of Our Dearly Departed Are Trapped In Some Inferior Being, In An Animal, Aplant, An Inanimate Object, Indeed Lost To Us Until The Day, Which For Some Never Arrives, When We Find That We Pass Near The Tree, Or Come To Possess The Object Which Is Their Prison. Then They Quiver, Call Us, And As Soon As We Have Recognized Them, The Spell Is Broken. Freed By Us, They Have Vanquished Death And Return To Live With Us.
Death
Animal
Broken
We Feel In One World, We Think And Name In Another. Between The Two We Can Set Up A System Of References, But We Cannot Fill In The Gap.
Life
Thinking
Names
When One Becomes For An Instant One's Former Self, That Is To Say Different From What One Has Been For Some Time Past, One's Sensibility, Being No Longer Dulled By Habit, Receives From The Slightest Stimulus Vivid Impressions Which Make Everything That Has Preceded Them Fade Into Insignificance, Impressions To Which, Because Of Their Intensity, We Attach Ourselves With The Momentary Enthusiasm Of A Drunkard.
Past
Self
Different
We Are Able To Find Everything In Our Memory, Which Is Like A Dispensary Or Chemical Laboratory In Which Chance Steers Our Hand Sometimes To A Soothing Drug And Sometimes To A Dangerous Poison.
Memories
Hands
Drug
A Picture's Beauty Does Not Depend On The Things Portrayed In It.
Doe
Depends
La Possession De Ce Qu'on Aime Est Une Joie Plus Grande Encore Que L'amour. Possessing What One Loves Is An Even Greater Joy Than Love Itself.
Love Is
Joy
One Love
There Comes In All Our Lives A Time ... When The Ears Can Listen To No Music Save What The Moonlight Breathes Through The Flute Of Silence.
Silence
Ears
Flutes
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