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.

-Marcel Proust

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None Of Us Constitutes

Marcel Proust

Topic

Book

Simple

Personality

More From Marcel Proust

A Person Does Not...stand Motionless And Clear Before Our Eyes With His Merits, His Defects, His Plans, His Intentions With Regard To Ourself Exposed On His Surface...but Is A Shadow Which We Can Never Succeed In Penetrating...a Shadow Behind Which We Can Alternately Imagine, With Equal Justification, That There Burns The Flame Of Hatred And Of Love.

Eye

Flames

Hatred

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

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

We See Things But We Don't See Them, Like Things That Slid Through The Mind, One Flowing Into Another.

Mind

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

L'ide E Qu'on Mourra Est Plus Cruelle Que Mourir, Mais Moins Que L'ide E Qu'un Autre Est Mort. The Idea Of Dying Is Worse Than Dying Itself, But Less Cruel Than The Idea That Another Has Died.

Ideas

Dying

Plus

The Only Paradise Is Paradise Lost.

Paradise

Lost

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

Tree

There Is No Man, However Wise, Who Has Not At Some Period Of His Youth Said Things, Or Lived In A Way The Consciousness Of Which Is So Unpleasant To Him In Later Life That He Would Gladly, If He Could, Expunge It From His Memory.

Life

Wise

Wisdom

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

Knowing Does Not Always Allow Us To Prevent, But At Least The Things That We Know, We Hold Them, If Not In Our Hands, But At Leastin Our Thoughts Where We May Dispose Of Them At Our Whim, Which Gives Us The Illusion Of Power Over Them.

Thoughtful

Power

Thinking

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

... We Made Much Less Happy By The Kindness Of A Great Writer, Which Strictly Speaking We Find Only In His Books, Than We Suffer From The Hostility Of A Woman Whom We Have Not Chosen For Her Intelligence, But Whom We Cannot Stop Ourselves From Loving.

Love

Happy

Kindness

People Who Are Not In Love Fail To Understand How An Intelligent Man Can Suffer Because Of A Very Ordinary Woman. This Is Like Being Surprised That Anyone Should Be Stricken With Cholera Because Of A Creature So Insignificant As The Common Bacillus.

Love

Intelligent

Men

Happiness Is Beneficial For The Body, But It Is Grief That Develops The Powers Of The Mind.

Happiness

Sympathy

Depression

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

Time, Which Changes People, Does Not Alter The Image We Have Retained Of Them.

Change

Time

People

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

Truth Is A Point Of View About Things.

Truth

Views

Truth Is

She Poured Out Swann's Tea, Inquired "lemon Or Cream?" And, On His Answering "cream, Please," Said To Him With A Laugh: "a Cloud!" And As He Pronounced It Excellent, "you See, I Know Just How You Like It." This Tea Had Indeed Seemed To Swann, Just As It Seemed To Her; Something Precious, And Love Has Such A Need To Find Some Justification For Itself, Some Guarantee Of Duration, In Pleasures Which Without It Would Have No Existence And Must Cease With Its Passing.

Clouds

Laughing

Tea

When I Went To Venice I Found That My Dream Had Become-incredibly, But Quite Simply-my Address.

Dream

Venice

Addresses

We Were Resigned To Suffering, Thinking That We Loved Outside Ourselves, And We Perceive That Our Love Is A Function Of Our Sorrow, That Our Love Perhaps Is Our Sorrow.

Love Is

Thinking

Suffering

... 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

When We Have Passed A Certain Age, The Soul Of The Child That We Were And The Souls Of The Dead From Whom We Sprang Come And Shower Upon Us Their Riches And Their Spells, Asking To Be Allowed To Contribute To The New Emotions Which We Feel And In Which, Erasing Their Former Image, We Recast Them In An Original Creation.

Children

Soul

Age

So We Don't Believe That Life Is Beautiful Because We Don't Recall It But If We Get A Whiff Of A Long-forgotten Smell We Are Suddenly Intoxicated And Similarly We Think We No Longer Love The Dead Because We Don't Remember Them But If By Chance We Come Across An Old Glove We Burst Into Tears.

Beautiful

Believe

Thinking

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

The Tiny, Initial Clue ... By Allowing Us To Imagine What We Do Not Know, Stimulates A Desire For Knowledge.

Knowledge

Desire

Tiny

Memory Nourishes The Heart, And Grief Abates.

Sympathy

Memories

Grief

...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

Proust Was The Greatest Novelist Of The Twentieth Century, Just As Tolstoy Was In The Nineteenth.

Novelists

Proust

Century

It Is In Moments Of Illness That We Are Compelled To Recognize That We Live Not Alone But Chained To A Creature Of A Different Kingdom, Whole Worlds Apart, Who Has No Knowledge Of Us And By Whom It Is Impossible To Make Ourselves Understood: Our Body.

Fitness

Cancer

Knowledge

The Time At Our Disposal Each Day Is Elastic; The Passions We Feel Dilate It, Those That Inspire Us Shrink It, And Habit Fills It.

Passion

Inspire

Each Day

Thanks To Art, Instead Of Seeing One World, Our Own, We See It Multiplied And As Many Original Artists As There Are, So Many Worlds Are At Our Disposal.

Art

World

Thanks

Neurosis Has An Absolute Genius For Malingering. There Is No Illness Which It Cannot Counterfeit Perfectly. If It Is Capable Of Deceiving The Doctor, How Should It Fail To Deceive The Patient

Lying

Doctors

Neurosis

Even Though Our Lives Wander, Our Memories Remain In One Place.

Memories

Wander

Our Memories

Sometimes In This Life, Under The Stress Of An Exceptional Emotion, People Do Say What They Think.

Honesty

Stress

Thinking

It Is The Tragedy Of Other People That They Are To Us Merely Showcases For The Very Perishable Collections Of Our Own Mind.

People

Mind

Tragedy

A Man May Have Spent His Life Among The Great Ones Of The Earth, Who To Him Have Been Merely Boring Relatives Or Tedious Acquaintances Because A Familiarity Engendered In The Cradle Had Stripped Them Of All Glamour In His Eyes.

Eye

Men

Earth

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.

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

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

Friendship Is In The End No More Than: " . . . A Lie Which Seeks To Make Us Believe That We Are Not Irremediably Alone."

Lying

Believe

Ends

There Are Optical Illusions In Time As Well As Space.

Space

Optical Illusions

Illusion

A Little Insomnia Is Not Without Its Value In Making Us Appreciate Sleep, In Throwing A Ray Of Light Upon That Darkness.

Sleep

Insomnia

Light

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

Death

Hope

The Inertia Of The Mind Urges It To Slide Down The Easy Slope Of Imagination, Rather Than To Climb The Steep Slope Of Introspection.

Imagination

Mind

Slides

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

Feelings

There Are People Whose Faces Assume An Unaccustomed Beauty And Majesty The Moment They Cease To Look Out Of Their Eyes.

Eye

People

Looks

No Sooner Had The Warm Liquid Mixed With The Crumbs Touched My Palate Than A Shudder Ran Through Me And I Stopped, Intent Upon The Extraordinary Thing That Was Happening To Me.

Liquid

Crumbs

Palate

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

A Photograph Acquires Something Of The Dignity Which It Ordinarily Lacks When It Ceases To Be A Reproduction Of Reality And Shows Us Things That No Longer Exist.

Photography

Reality

Dignity

I Wished To See Storms Only On Those Coasts Where They Raged With Most Violence.

Storm

Violence

Coast

For A Long Time I Would Go To Bed Early. [fr., Longtemps, Je Me Suis Couche De Bonne Heure.]

Book

Long

Bed

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

When A Belief Vanishes, There Survives It -- More And More Vigorously So As To Cloak The Absence Of The Power, Now Lost To Us, Of Imparting Reality To New Things -- A Fetishistic Attachment To The Old Things Which It Did Once Animate, As If It Was In Them And Not In Ourselves That The Divine Spark Resided, And As If Our Present Incredulity Had A Contingent Cause -- The Death Of The Gods.

Reality

Attachment

Old Things

Love Is Space And Time Measured By The Heart.

Missing You

True Love

Best Love

The Facts Of Life Do Not Penetrate To The Sphere In Which Our Beliefs Are Cherished; They Did Not Engender Those Beliefs, And They Are Powerless To Destroy Them.

Facts

Spheres

Belief

Indeed, Among The Lesser Auxiliaries To Success In Love, An Absence, The Declining Of An Invitation To Dinner, An Unintentional, Unconscious Harshness Are Of More Service Than All The Cosmetics And Fine Clothes In The World.

Fashion

Clothes

World

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

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.

Spiritual

Journey

Hints

The Only Possible Paradises Are Those We Have Lost

Paradise

Lost

We Say That We Often See Animals In Our Dreams, But We Forget That Almost Always We Are Ourselves Animals Therein, Deprived Of That Reasoning Power Which Projects Upon Things The Light Of Certainty; On The Contrary We Bring To Bear On The Spectacle Of Life Only A Dubious Vision, Extinguished Anew Every Moment By Oblivion, The Former Reality Fading Before That Which Follows It As One Projection Of A Magic Lantern Fades Before The Next As We Change The Slide.

Dream

Animal

Reality

They Like My Books Better In England Than In France; A Translation Would Be Very Successful There.

Book

Reading

Successful

Illness Is The Doctor To Whom We Pay Most Heed; To Kindness, To Knowledge, We Make Promise Only; Pain We Obey.

Pain

Kindness

Doctors

It Comes So Soon, The Moment When There Is Nothing Left To Wait For.

Waiting

Moments

Left

It Is Not Only By Dint Of Lying To Others, But Also Of Lying To Ourselves, That We Cease To Notice That We Are Lying.

Lying

Cease

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

Friendship

Happiness

Happy

The Particulars Of Life Do Not Matter To The Artist; They Merely Provide Him With The Opportunity To Lay Bare His Genius.

Art

Opportunity

Genius

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.

Journey

Years

Ties

May You Always See A Blue Sky Overhead, My Young Friend; And Then, Even When The Time Comes, As It Has Come For Me Now, When The Woods Are Black, When Night Is Fast Falling, You Will Be Able To Console Yourself, As I Do, By Looking Up At The Sky.

Fall

Night

Young Friends

Fashions, Being Themselves Begotten Of The Desire For Change, Are Quick To Change Also.

Fashion

Desire

The Creation Of The World Did Not Occur At The Beginning Of Time, It Occurs Every Day.

World

Creation

Creation Of The World

All Our Final Decisions Are Made In A State Of Mind That Is Not Going To Last.

Entrepreneur

Decision

Luck

It Is Often Hard To Bear The Tears That We Ourselves Have Caused.

Inspirational

Anorexia

Tears

And So It Is With Our Own Past. It Is A Labour In Vain To Attempt To Recapture It: All The Efforts Of Our Intellect Must Prove Futile. The Past Is Hidden Somewhere Outside The Realm, Beyond The Reach Of Intellect, In Some Material Object (in The Sensation Which That Material Object Will Give Us) Of Which We Have No Inkling. And It Depends On Chance Whether Or Not We Come Upon This Object Before We Ourselves Must Die.

Past

Giving

Effort

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

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

Only By Art Can We Get Outside Ourselves, Instead Of Seeing Only One World, Our Own, We See It Under Multiple Forms.

Art

World

Form

What Barrier Is So Insurmountable As Silence?

Silence

Barriers

Insurmountable

Lies Are Essential To Humanity.

Lying

Humanity

Essentials

Three-quarters Of The Sicknesses Of Intelligent People Come From Their Intelligence. They Need At Least A Doctor Who Can Understand This Sickness.

Intelligent

Gambling

Doctors

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

As Long As Men Are Free To Ask What They Must, Free To Say What They Think, Free To Think What They Will, Freedom Can Never Be Lost And Science Can Never Regress.

Freedom

Science

Men

No Man Is A Complete Mystery Except To Himself.

Men

Mystery

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

Dear Friend: I Have Nearly Died Three Times Since Morning.

Morning

Three

Dear Friend

On Ne Re C° Oit Pas La Sagesse, Il Faut La De Couvrir Soi-me" Me, Apre' S Un Trajet Que Personne Ne Peut Faire Pour Nous, Ne Peut Nous E Pargner. We Do Not Receive Wisdom.we Must Discover It Ourselves After Experiences Which No One Else Can Have For Us And From Which No One Else Can Spare Us.

Spares

We Are At Times Too Ready To Believe That The Present Is The Only Possible State Of Things.

Believe

Open Minded

States

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

But Sometimes Illumination Comes To Our Rescue At The Very Moment When All Seems Lost; We Have Knocked At Every Door And They Open On Nothing Until, At Last, We Stumble Unconsciously Against The Only One Through Which We Can Enter The Kingdom We Have Sought In Vain A Hundred Years - And It Opens.

Doors

Illumination

Years

To Understand A Profound Thought Is To Have, At The Moment One Understands It, A Profound Thought Oneself; And This Demands Some Effort, A Genuine Descent To The Heart Of Oneself . . . Only Desire And Love Give Us The Strength To Make This Effort. The Only Books That We Truly Absorb Are Those We Read With Real Appetite, After Having Worked Hard To Get Them, So Great Had Been Our Need Of Them.

Real

Book

Heart

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

Error, By Force Of Contrast, Enhances The Triumph Of Truth.

Errors

Triumph

Force

I Had Come In Time To Learn That It Was A Mistake To Smile A Friendly Smile When Somebody Made A Fool Of Me.

Time

Mistake

Friendly

Pour E Crire Ce Livre Essentiel, Le Seul Livre Vrai, Un Grand E Crivain N'a Pas, Dans Le Sens Courant, A' L'inventer Puisqu'il Existe De J A' En Chacun De Nous, Mais A' Le Traduire. To Write The Essential Book, The Only True Book, A Great Writerdoesnot Needto Invent Becausethebook Already Exists Inside Each One Of Us And Merely Needs Translation.

Book

Writing

Essentials

We May Have Revolved Every Possible Idea In Our Minds, And Yet The Truth Has Never Occurred To Us, And It Is From Without, When We Are Least Expecting It, That It Gives Us Its Cruel Stab And Wounds Us Forever.

Truth

Ideas

Giving

Existence Is Of Little Interest Save On Days When The Dust Of Realities Is Mingled With Magic Sand.

Reality

Dust

Magic

When The Mind Has A Tendency To Dream, It Is A Mistake To Keep Dreams Away From It, To Ration Its Dreams. So Long As You Distract Your Mind From Its Dreams, It Will Not Know Them For What They Are; You Will Always Be Being Taken In By The Appearance Of Things, Because You Will Not Have Grasped Their True Nature. If A Little Dreaming Is Dangerous, The Cure For It Is Not To Dream Less But To Dream More, To Dream All The Time. One Must Have A Thorough Understanding Of One

Dream

Mistake

Taken

The Heart Does Not Lie.

Lying

Heart

Doe

We Do Not Succeed In Changing Things According To Our Desire, But Gradually Our Desire Changes.

Change

Desire

Literature

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

That Translucent Alabaster Of Our Memories.

Memories

Our Memories

Conversation, Which Is Friendship's Mode Of Expression, Is A Superficial Digression Which Gives Us Nothing Worth Acquiring. We May Talk For A Lifetime Without Doing More Than Indefinitely Repeat The Vacuity Of A Minute.

Expression

Giving

May

Every Kiss Provokes Another. Oh, In Those Earliest Days Of Love How Naturally The Kisses Spring To Life! So Closely, In Their Profusion, Do They Crowd Together That Lovers Would Find It As Hard To Count The Kisses Exchanged In An Hour As To Count The Flowers In A Meadow In May.

Spring

Flower

Kissing

To Achieve Accurate Knowledge Of Others, If Such A Thing Were Possible, We Could Only Ever Arrive At It Through The Slow And Unsure Recognition Of Our Own Initial Optical Inaccuracies. However, Such Knowledge Is Not Possible: For, While Our Vision Of Others Is Being Adjusted, They, Who Are Not Made Of Mere Brute Matter, Are Also Changing; We Think We Have Managed To See Them More Clearly, But They Shift; And When We Believe We Have Them Fully In Focus, It Is Merely Our Older Images Of Them That We Have Clarified, But Which Are Themselves Already Out Of Date.

Believe

Thinking

Focus

Things Don't Change, But By And By Our Wishes Change.

Friendship

Change

Perspective

When I Am Not Too Sad To Listen, Music Is My Consolation.

Music

Music Is

Consolation

Everything Great In The World Comes From Neurotics. They Alone Have Founded Our Religions And Composed Our Masterpieces.

Religion

Literature

World

Now Are The Woods All Black, But Still The Sky Is Blue.

Blue

Sky

Black

For Every Sin There Is Forgiveness, And Especially For The Sins Of Youth.

Youth

Sin

Only Imagination And Belief Can Differentiate From The Rest Certain Objects, Certain People, And Can Create An Atmosphere.

Imagination

People

Atmosphere

As Soon As He Ceased To Be Mad He Became Merely Stupid. There Are Maladies We Must Not Seek To Cure Because They Alone Protect Us From Others That Are More Serious.

Stupid

Mad

Disease

Illness Is The Most Heeded Of Doctors: To Goodness And Wisdom We Only Make Promises; Pain We Obey.

Pain

Health

Doctors

For Theories And Schools, Like Microbes And Corpuscles, Devour One Another And By Their Strife Ensure The Continuity Of Life.

School

Continuity Of Life

Strife

Always Try To Keep A Patch Of Sky Above Your Life.

Sky

Trying

Patches

We Passionately Long That There May Be Another Life In Which We Shall Be Similar To What We Are Here Below. But We Do Not Pause To Reflect That, Even Without Waiting For That Other Life, In This Life, After A Few Years We Are Unfaithful To What We Have Been, To What We Wished To Remain Immortally.

Years

Long

Waiting

The Memory Of A Particular Image Is But Regret For A Particular Moment.

Memories

Regret

Moments

We Become Moral When We Are Unhappy.

Unhappy

Moral

Unhappiness

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

The Opinions Which We Hold Of One Another, Our Relations With Friends And Kinsfolk Are In No Sense Permanent, Save In Appearance, But Are As Eternally Fluid As The Sea Itself.

Sea

Opinion

Appearance

When From A Long Distant Past Nothing Subsists After The Things Are Broken And Scattered, The Smell And Taste Of Things Remain.

Food

Past

Smell

The Most Familiar Precepts Are Not Always The Truest.

Truth

Familiar

Truest

These Dreams Reminded Me That, Since I Wished Some Day To Become A Writer, It Was High Time To Decide What Sort Of Books I Was Going To Write. But As Soon As I Asked Myself The Question, And Tried To Discover Some Subject To Which I Could Impart A Philosophical Significance Of Infinite Value, My Mind Would Stop Like A Clock, My Consciousness Would Be Faced With A Blank, I Would Feel Either That I Was Wholly Devoid Of Talent Or Perhaps That Some Malady Of The Brain Was Hindering Its Development.

Dream

Book

Philosophical

Wars Are Fought For The Benefit Of Oligarchs, Triumphs Bought With The Blood Of Peons.

War

Blood

Benefits

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.

People

Different

Our Words

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

People

Pot

We Pack The Physical Outline Of The Creature We See With All The Ideas We Have Already Formed About Him, And In The Complete Picture Of Him We Compose In Our Minds Those Ideas Have Certainly The Principal Place.

Ideas

Mind

Packs

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

Animal

Inspire

After A Certain Age, The More One Becomes Oneself, The More Obvious One's Family Traits Become.

Age

Certain

Obvious

I Shall Not Find A Painting More Beautiful Because The Artist Has Painted A Hawthorn In The Foreground, Though I Know Of Nothing More Beautiful Than The Hawthorn, For I Wish To Remain Sincere And Because I Know That The Beauty Of A Painting Does Not Depend On The Things Represented In It. I Shall Not Collect Images Of Hawthorn. I Do Not Venerate Hawthorn, I Go To See And Smell It.

Beautiful

Artist

Smell

It Is Only With The Passions Of Others That We Are Ever Really Familiar, And What We Come To Discover About Our Own Can Only Be Learned From Them.

Passion

Familiar

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

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.

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

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

My Dear Madame, I Just Noticed That I Forgot My Cane At Your House Yesterday; Please Be Good Enough To Give It To The Bearer Of This Letter. P.s. Kindly Pardon Me For Disturbing You; I Just Found My Cane.

Yesterday

Giving

House

At That Time, He Was Satisfying A Sensual Curiosity By Experiencing The Pleasures Of People Who Live For Love. He Had Believed He Could Stop There, That He Would Not Be Obliged To Learn Their Sorrows; How Small A Thing Her Charm Was For Him Now Compared With The Astounding Terror That Extended Out From It Like A Murky Halo, The Immense Anguish Of Not Knowing At Every Moment What She Had Been Doing, Of Not Possessing Her Everywhere And Always!

Knowing

People

Sensual

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

Adultery

Breathe

Most Of Our Faculties Lie Dormant Because They Can Rely Upon Habit, Which Knows What There Is To Be Done And Has No Need Of Their Services.

Lying

Rely Upon

Needs

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

I Believe That All True Art Is Classic, But The Dictates Of The Mind Rarely Permit Of Its Being Recognized As Such When It First Appears.

Art

Believe

Mind

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

People Who, Not Being In Love Themselves, Feel That A Clever Man Should Only Be Unhappy About A Person Who Is Worth His While; Which Is Rather Like Being Astonished That Anyone Should Condescend To Die Of Cholera At The Bidding Of So Insignificant A Creature As The Comma Bacillus.

Clever

Being In Love

Men

Everything That Seems Imperishable Tends To Extinguishment.

Seems

Only Through Art Can We Get Outside Of Ourselves And Know Another's View Of The Universe Which Is Not The Same As Ours And See Landscapes Which Otherwise Would Remain Unknown To Us Like The Landscapes Of The Moon. Thanks To Art, Instead Of Seeing A Single World, Our Own, We See It Multiply Until We Have Before Us As Many Worlds As There Are Original Artists.

Art

Moon

Views

Happiness Serves Hardly Any Other Purpose Than To Make Unhappiness Possible.

Happiness

Laughter

Joy

We Can Only Be Faithful To What We Remember, And We Remember Only What We Have Known.

Faithful

Remember

Being Faithful

A Work In Which There Are Theories Is Like An Object Which Still Has The Ticket That Shows Its Price.

Tickets

Theory

Shows

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

The Truth Has No Need To Be Uttered To Be Made Apparent, And ... One May Perhaps Gather It With More Certainty, Without Waiting For Words And Without Even Taking Any Account Of Them, From Countless Outward Signs, Even From Certain Invisible Phenomena, Analogous In The Sphere Of Human Character To What Atmospheric Changes Are In The Physical World.

Truth

Character

Waiting

Unkind People Imagine Themselves To Be Inflicting Pain On Someone Equally Unkind.

Pain

People

Imagine

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

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

Reality Is Never More Than A First Step Towards An Unknown On The Road To Which One Can Never Progress Very Far.

Reality

Progress

Firsts

The Courage Of One's Opinions Is Always A Form Of Calculating Cowardice In The Eyes Of The "other Side.

Eye

Sides

Opinion

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

For Each Illness That Doctors Cure With Medicine, They Provoke Ten In Healthy People By Inoculating Them With The Virus That Is A Thousand Times More Powerful Than Any Microbe: The Idea That One Is Ill.

Powerful

Doctors

Ideas

Facts Do Not Find Their Way Into The World In Which Our Beliefs Reside; They Did Not Produce Our Beliefs, They Do Not Destroy Them; They May Inflict On Them The Most Constant Refutations Without Weakening Them, And An Avalanche Of Afflictions Or Ailments Succeeding One Another Without Interruption In A Family Will Not Make It Doubt The Goodness Of Its God Or The Talent Of Its Doctor.

Doctors

Doubt

World

We Must Never Be Afraid To Go Too Far, For Truth Lies Beyond.

Motivational

Success

Lying

Desire Makes Everything Blossom

Desire

Anticipation

It Has Been Said That Beauty Is A Promise Of Happiness. Conversely, The Possibility Of Pleasure Can Be A Beginning Of Beauty.

Beauty

Promise

Pleasure

Through Art Alone Are We Able To Emerge From Ourselves, To Know What Another Person Sees Of A Universe Which Is Not The Same As Our Own And Of Which, Without Art, The Landscapes Would Remain As Unknown To Us As Those That May Exist On The Moon.

Art

Persons

Knows

But When One Believes In The Reality Of Things, Making Them Visible By Artificial Means Is Not Quite The Same As Feeling That They Are Close At Hand.

Believe

Mean

Reality

The Duty And The Task Of A Writer Are Those Of An Interpreter.

Tasks

Duty

Interpreter

There Are Perhaps No Days Of Our Childhood We Lived So Fully As Those We Spent With A Favorite Book.

Book

Reading

Unhappy Childhood

The Artist Who Gives Up An Hour Of Work For An Hour Of Conversation With A Friend Knows That He Is Sacrificing A Reality For Something That Does Not Exist.

Giving Up

Sacrifice

Reality

At A Certain Age, We Have Already Been Struck By Love; It No Longer Develops Alone, According To Its Own Mysteries And Fateful Laws While Our Hearts Stand By Startled And Passive. We Come To Its Assistancerecognizing One Of Its Symptoms, We Recall, We Bring Back To Life The Others. Since We Possess Its Song Engraved In Its Totality Within Us, We Do Not Need For A Woman To Tell Us The Beginning--filled With Admiration Inspired By Beauty--to Find The Continuation.

Song

Heart

Law

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

To Be An Artist Is To Fail, As No Other Dare To Fail... Failure Is His World And The Shrink From It Desertion

Artist

World

Failing

The Charms Of The Passing Woman Are Generally In Direct Ratio To The Swiftness Of Our Passage.

Literature

Swiftness

Charm

A Woman One Loves Rarely Suffices For All Our Needs, So We Deceive Her With Another Whom We Do Not Love.

Love

Hype

Infidelity

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

Death Is In Truth An Illness From Which We Recover

Illness

No Days, Perhaps, Of All Our Childhood Are Ever So Fully Lived As Those That We Had Regarded As Not Being Lived At All: Days Spent Wholly With A Favourite Book. Everything That Seemed To Fill Them Full For Others We Pushed Aside, Because It Stood Between Us And The Pleasures Of The Gods.

Book

Childhood

Pleasure

...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

But Sometimes The Future Is Latent In Us Without Our Knowing It, And Our Supposedly Lying Words Foreshadow An Imminent Reality.

Lying

Reality

Knowing

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

There Is Probably Not One Person, However Great His Virtue, Who Cannot Be Led By The Complexities Of Life's Circumstances To A Familiarity With The Vices He Condemns The Most Vehemently--without His Completely Recognizing This Vice Which, Disguised As Certain Events, Touches Him And Wounds Him: Strange Words, An Inexplicable Attitude, On A Given Night, Of The Person Whom He Otherwise Has So Many Reasons To Love.

Attitude

Night

Tolerance

We Do Not Succeed In Changing Things According To Our Desire, But Gradually Our Desire Changes. The Situation That We Hoped To Change Because It Was Intolerable Becomes Unimportant. We Have Not Managed To Surmount The Obstacle, As We Were Absolutely Determined To Do, But Life Has Taken Us Round It, Led Us Past It, And Then If We Turn Round To Gaze At The Remote Past, We Can Barely Catch Sight Of It, So Imperceptible Has It Become.

Life

Taken

Adversity

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

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

If We Are To Make Reality Endurable, We Must All Nourish A Fantasy Or Two.

Reality

Two

Fantasy

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

Often Is

Opposites

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

There Is Probably No One, However Rigid His Virtue, Who Is Not Liable To Find Himself, By The Complexity Of Circumstances, Living At Close Quarters With The Very Vice Which He Himself Has Been Most Outspoken In Condemning -- Without Altogether Recognizing It Beneath The Disguise Of Ambiguous Behavior Which It Assumes In His Presence.

Vices

Assuming

Virtue

The Real Voyage Of Discovery Consists Not In Seeking New Landscapes, But In Having New Eyes.

Inspirational

Life

Positive

Those Whose Suffering Is Due To Love Are, As We Say Of Certain Invalids, Their Own Physicians.

Suffering

Physicians

Certain

The Only True Voyage Of Discovery, . . . Would Be Not To Visit Strange Lands But To Possess Other Eyes.

Life

Travel

Eye

The Past Not Merely Is Not Fugitive, It Remains Present.

Past

Fugitive

Remains

Photography Is The Product Of Complete Alienation.

Photography

Alienation

Products

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

With One Image He Would Make That Beauty Explode Into Me.

Le Style, Pour L'e Crivain Aussi Bien Que Pour Le Peintre, Est Une Question Non De Technique Mais De Vision. For The Writer As Well As For The Painter, Style Is Not A Question Of Technique, But Of Vision.

Style

Vision

Technique

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

Nine Tenths Of The Ills From Which Intelligent People Suffer Spring From Their Intellect.

Spring

Intelligent

People

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

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

I Understood That All The Material Of A Literary Work Was In My Past Life, I Understood That I Had Acquired It In The Midst Of Frivolous Amusements, In Idleness, In Tenderness And In Pain, Stored Up By Me Without My Divining Its Destination Or Even Its Survival, As The Seed Has In Reserve All The Ingredients Which Will Nourish The Plant.

Pain

Past

Survival

Understanding Quotes: Their Essence and Application

Quotes, or quotations, are powerful tools in communication, encapsulating ideas, emotions, and wisdom in concise expressions. They serve various purposes across different contexts, from academic writing to everyday conversation.

1. Defining Quotes

A quote is a repetition of someone else's statement or thoughts. It can be a direct replication of words spoken or written by another individual, often used to support arguments, provide evidence, or convey profound insights.

2. The Importance of Quotes

2.1. Enhancing Credibility

Incorporating quotes from authoritative sources can bolster the credibility of your work. By referencing experts or primary sources, you demonstrate thorough research and a solid foundation for your arguments.

2.2. Providing Evidence

Quotes serve as concrete evidence to support claims. In academic and professional writing, they validate points made, offering readers a basis to trust the information presented.

2.3. Conveying Emotions and Perspectives

Quotes can encapsulate emotions and perspectives succinctly. They allow writers to express complex feelings or viewpoints through the words of others, often more eloquently than paraphrasing.

3. Types of Quotes

3.1. Direct Quotes

Direct quotes involve copying the exact words from a source, enclosed in quotation marks. They are used when the original wording is significant or particularly well-expressed.

3.2. Indirect Quotes (Paraphrasing)

Indirect quotes restate the original message in your own words. While not enclosed in quotation marks, they still require proper attribution to the original source.

3.3. Block Quotes

Block quotes are lengthy direct quotations, formatted as a separate block of text. They are typically used for quotes exceeding a certain length, varying by citation style. For instance, in APA style, quotes longer than 40 words are formatted as block quotes.

4. Proper Usage of Quotes

4.1. Contextual Relevance

Ensure that the quote you choose is relevant to the topic and adds value to your content. Avoid inserting quotes solely for decorative purposes.

4.2. Integration into Your Writing

Seamlessly integrate quotes into your writing. Introduce them appropriately and follow up with analysis or commentary to connect them to your main points.

4.3. Attribution and Citation

Always attribute quotes to their original authors and provide proper citations according to the required style guide (APA, MLA, Chicago, etc.).

5. Common Mistakes to Avoid

5.1. Overusing Quotes

Relying too heavily on quotes can overshadow your voice. Use them sparingly to support your arguments, not replace them.

5.2. Lack of Analysis

Presenting a quote without analysis or explanation can leave readers questioning its relevance. Always follow up with your interpretation or discussion.

5.3. Misquoting or Taking Out of Context

Ensure that quotes are accurate and not taken out of context, as this can mislead readers and undermine your credibility.

6. Quotes in Different Contexts

6.1. Academic Writing

In academic writing, quotes are used to support arguments, provide evidence, and engage with existing literature. Proper citation is crucial to avoid plagiarism.

6.2. Journalism

Journalists use quotes to provide firsthand accounts, add authenticity, and present multiple perspectives within a story.

6.3. Literature and Creative Writing

In literature, quotes can be used to convey character voices, themes, and stylistic elements. They enrich narratives and provide depth to storytelling.

7. Punctuation and Formatting

Understanding the correct punctuation and formatting of quotes is essential:

Quotation Marks: Always enclose direct quotes within quotation marks.

Punctuation Placement: In American English, periods and commas are placed inside quotation marks, while colons and semicolons are placed outside.

Block Quotes: For longer quotes, format them as block quotes without quotation marks, and indent the entire block.

8. Ethical Considerations

Ethical use of quotes involves accurate representation, proper attribution, and respect for intellectual property. Misuse can lead to plagiarism, which carries serious academic and professional consequences.

9. Tools for Managing Quotes

Utilize tools like citation generators and plagiarism checkers to manage quotes effectively. These tools help ensure proper formatting and originality in your writing.

Conclusion

Quotes are invaluable in enriching content, providing evidence, and conveying complex ideas succinctly. When used appropriately, they enhance the quality and credibility of your writing. Always ensure relevance, proper integration, and ethical usage to maximize their impact.

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