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That Abominable And Sensual Act Called Reading The Newspaper, Thanks To Which All The Misfortunes And Cataclysms In The Universe Over The Last Twenty-four Hours, The Battles Which Cost The Lives Of Fifty-thousand Men, The Murders, The Strikes, The Bankruptcies, The Fires, The Poisonings, The Suicides, The Divorces, The Cruel Emotions Of Statesmen And Actors, Are Transformed For Us, Who Don't Even Care, Into A Morning Treat, Blending In Wonderfully, In A Particularly Exciting And Tonic Way, With The Recommended Ingestion Of A Few Sips Of Cafe Au Lait.
-Marcel Proust
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That Abominable And Sensual

Marcel Proust
That Abominable And Sensual Act Called Reading The Newspaper, Thanks To Which All The Misfortunes And Cataclysms In The Universe Over The Last Twenty-four Hours, The Battles Which Cost The Lives Of Fifty-thousand Men, The Murders, The Strikes, The Bankruptcies, The Fires, The Poisonings, The Suicides, The Divorces, The Cruel Emotions Of Statesmen And Actors, Are Transformed For Us, Who Don't Even Care, Into A Morning Treat, Blending In Wonderfully, In A Particularly Exciting And Tonic Way, With The Recommended Ingestion Of A Few Sips Of Cafe Au Lait.
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Topic
Suicide
Morning
Reading
More From Marcel Proust
Until I Saw Chardin's Painting, I Never Realized How Much Beauty Lay Around Me In My Parents' House, In The Half-cleared Table, In The Corner Of A Tablecloth Left Awry, In The Knife Beside The Empty Oyster Shell.
Oysters
Knives
Parent
We Have Such Numerous Interests In Our Lives That It Is Not Uncommon, On A Single Occasion, For The Foundations Of A Happiness That Does Not Yet Exist To Be Laid Down Alongside The Intensification Of A Grief From Which We Are Still Suffering.
Grief
Suffering
Foundation
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
The Truth Is That Every Morning War Is Declared Afresh. And The Men Who Wish To Continue It Are As Guilty As The Men Who Began It, More Guilty Perhaps, For The Latter Perhaps Did Not Foresee All Its Horrors.
Morning
War
Men
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
Even In The Most Insignificant Details Of Our Daily Life, None Of Us Can Be Said To Constitute A Material Whole, Which Is Identical For Everyone, And Need Only Be Turned Up Like A Page In An Account-book Or The Record Of A Will; Our Social Personality Is Created By The Thoughts Of Other People.
Book
People
Personality
What A Profound Significance Small Things Assume When The Woman We Love Conceals Them From Us.
Love
Profound
Literature
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
The Only Possible Paradises Are Those We Have Lost
Paradise
Lost
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
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.
Death
Grieving
Filled In
A Sleeping Man Holds In A Circle Around Him The Thread Of The Hours, The Order Of Years And Of Worlds. He Consults Them Instinctively Upon Awaking And In One Second Reads In Them The Point Of The Earth That He Occupies, The Time Past Until His Arousal; But Their Ranks Can Be Mingled Or Broken.
Time
Sleep
Men
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
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
A Certain Similarity Exists, Although The Type Evolves, Between All The Women We Love, A Similarity That Is Due To The Fixity Of Our Own Temperament, Which It Is That Chooses Them, Eliminating All Those Who Would Not Be At Once Our Opposite And Our Complement, Fitted That Is To Say To Gratify Our Senses And To Wring Our Heart.
Heart
Opposites
Type
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
It Is The Wicked Deception Of Love That It Begins By Making Us Dwell Not Upon A Woman In The Outside World But Upon A Doll Inside Our Head, The Only Woman Who Is Always Available In Fact, The Only One We Shall Ever Possess, Whom The Arbitrary Nature Of Memory, Almost As Absolute As That Of The Imagination, May Have Made As Different From The Real Woman As The Real Balbec Had Been From The Balbec I Imagined- A Dummy Creation That Little By Little, To Our Own Detriment, We Shall Force The Real Woman To Resemble.
Memories
Real
Imagination
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
Even Though Our Lives Wander, Our Memories Remain In One Place.
Memories
Wander
Our Memories
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
It Is Always Thus, Impelled By A State Of Mind Which Is Destined Not To Last, We Make Our Irrevocable Decisions
Decision
Mind
Lasts
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
We See Things But We Don't See Them, Like Things That Slid Through The Mind, One Flowing Into Another.
Mind
The Bonds That Unite Another Person To Our Self Exist Only In Our Mind.
Relationship
Money
Self
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
Truth Is A Point Of View About Things.
Truth
Views
Truth Is
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 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
To The Pure All Things Are Pure!
Purity
Chastity
Confidence In Others
A Language Which We Do Not Know Is A Fortress Sealed.
Language
Fortresses
Knows
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
Do You Suppose That It Is Within Your Power To Insult Me? You Evidently Are Not Aware To Whom You Are Speaking? Do You Imagine That The Envenomed Spittle Of Five Hundred Little Gentlemen Of Your Type, Heaped One Upon Another, Would Succeed In Slobbering So Much As The Tips Of My August Toes?
August
Gentleman
Littles
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
Everybody Calls "clear" Those Ideas Which Have The Same Degree Of Confusion As His Own.
Teaching
Ideas
Confusion
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
Nine Tenths Of The Ills From Which Intelligent People Suffer Spring From Their Intellect.
Spring
Intelligent
People
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
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
The Most Familiar Precepts Are Not Always The Truest.
Truth
Familiar
Truest
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
There Are Optical Illusions In Time As Well As Space.
Space
Optical Illusions
Illusion
Dear Friend: I Have Nearly Died Three Times Since Morning.
Morning
Three
Dear Friend
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
Only Imagination And Belief Can Differentiate From The Rest Certain Objects, Certain People, And Can Create An Atmosphere.
Imagination
People
Atmosphere
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
... 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
It Comes So Soon, The Moment When There Is Nothing Left To Wait For.
Waiting
Moments
Left
Beautiful Books Are Always Written In A Sort Of Foreign Language.
Beautiful
Book
Language
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
We Become Moral When We Are Unhappy.
Unhappy
Moral
Unhappiness
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
Laissons Les Jolies Femmes Aux Hommes Sans Imagination. Leave The Pretty Women For The Men Without Imagination.
Men
Imagination
Pretty Woman
For Often I Have Wished To See A Person Again Without Realising That It Was Simply Because That Personal Recalled To Me A Hedge Of Hawthorns In Blossom, And I Have Been Led To Believe, And To Make Someone Else Believe, In A Renewal Of Affection, By What Was No More Than An Inclination To Travel.
Believe
Affection
Renewal
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 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 Can Be No Peace Of Mind In Love, Since The Advantage One Has Secured Is Never Anything But A Fresh Starting-point For Future Desires.
Love
Mind
Desire
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
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 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
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
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
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
My Destination Is No Longer A Place, Rather A New Way Of Seeing.
Way
Destination
New Ways
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
Let Us Be Grateful To People Who Make Us Happy, They Are The Charming Gardeners Who Make Our Souls Blossom.
Friendship
Happiness
Happy
Error, By Force Of Contrast, Enhances The Triumph Of Truth.
Errors
Triumph
Force
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
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
Le Bonheur Est Dans L'amour Un E Tat Anormal. In Love, Happiness Is Abnormal.
Abnormal
Amour
L Amour
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
Time Passes, And Little By Little Everything That We Have Spoken In Falsehood Becomes True.
Time
Lying
Literature
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
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
Reading Is At The Threshold Of Spiritual Life; It Can Introduce Us To It; It Does Not Constitute It. There Are, However, Certain Cases, Certain Pathological Cases, So To Speak, Of Spiritual Depression In Which Reading Can Become A Sort Of Curative Discipline And Assume The Task, Through Repeated Stimulation, Of Continuously Reintroducing A Lazy Mind Into The Life Of The Spirit.
Spiritual
Reading
Discipline
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
A Woman Whom We Need And Who Makes Us Suffer Elicits From Us A Whole Gamut Of Feelings Far More Profound And Vital Than A Man Of Genius Who Interests Us.
Men
Profound
Feelings
Our Virtues Themselves Are Not Free And Floating Qualities Over Which We Retain A Permanent Control And Power Of Disposal; They Come To Be So Closely Linked In Our Minds With The Actions In Conjunction With Which We Have Made It Our Duty To Exercise Them That If We Come To Engage In An Activity Of A Different Kind, It Catches Us Off Guard And Without The Slightest Awareness That It Might Involve The Application Of Those Same Virtues.
Exercise
Mind
Quality
Pleasures Are Like Photographs: In The Presence Of The Person We Love, We Take Only Negatives, Which We Develop Later, At Home, When We Have At Our Disposal Once More Our Inner Dark Room, The Door Of Which It Is Strictly Forbidden To Open While Others Are Present.
Home
Dark
Doors
... 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
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
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
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
Wars Are Fought For The Benefit Of Oligarchs, Triumphs Bought With The Blood Of Peons.
War
Blood
Benefits
Proust Was The Greatest Novelist Of The Twentieth Century, Just As Tolstoy Was In The Nineteenth.
Novelists
Proust
Century
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
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
The Real Stars Of Society Are Tired Of Appearing There. He Who Is Curious To Gaze At Them Must Often Migrate To Another Hemisphere, Where They Are More Or Less Alone.
Stars
Real
Tired
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
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
Everything That Seems Imperishable Tends To Extinguishment.
Seems
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
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
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
Now The Same Mystery Which Often Veils From Our Eyes The Reason For A Catastrophe Envelops Just As Frequently, When Love Is In Question, The Suddenness Of Certain Happy Solutions, Such As Had Been Brought To Me By Gilberte's Letter. Happy, Or At Least Seemingly Happy, For There Are Few That Can Really Be Happy When We Are Dealing With A Sentiment Of Such A Kind That Any Satisfaction We Can Give It Does No More, As A Rule, Than Dislodge Some Pain. And Yet Sometimes A Respite Is Granted Us, And We Have For A Little While The Illusion Of Being Healed.
Pain
Eye
Love Is
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 Disinterest [of My Two Great-aunts] In Anything That Had To Do With High Society Was Such That Their Sense Of Hearing ... Put To Rest Its Receptor Organs And Allowed Them To Suffer The True Beginnings Of Atrophy.
Aunt
Two
Suffering
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
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
Just As Those Who Practice The Same Profession Recognize Each Other Instinctively, So Do Those Who Practice The Same Vice.
Practice
Vices
Profession
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
Often It Is Just Lack Of Imagination That Keeps A Man From Suffering Very Much.
Men
Imagination
Suffering
Reading Is That Fruitful Miracle Of A Communication In The Midst Of Solitude.
Communication
Reading
Miracle
A Man Who Falls Straight Into Bed Night After Night, And Ceases To Live Until The Moment When He Wakes And Rises, Will Surely Never Dream Of Making, I Don't Say Great Discoveries, But Even Minor Observations About Sleep. He Scarcely Knows That He Is Asleep. A Little Insomnia Is Not Without Its Value In Making Us Appreciate Sleep, In Throwing A Ray Of Light Upon That Darkness.
Dream
Fall
Sleep
The Human Plagiarism Which Is Most Difficult To Avoid, For Individuals... Is The Plagiarism Of Ourselves.
Individual
Plagiarism
Difficult
The Sight Of The Little Madeleine Had Recalled Nothing To My Mind Before I Tasted It...
Sight
Mind
Littles
A Change In The Weather Is Sufficient To Recreate The World And Ourselves.
Rainy Day
Weather
World
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
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
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
Let Us Be Grateful To People Who Make Us Happy.
Thank You
Thankful
Appreciation
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
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
There Was Nothing Abnormal About It When Homosexuality Was The Norm.
Abnormal
Homosexuality
Normal And Abnormal
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Death Is In Truth An Illness From Which We Recover
Illness
Your Soul Is A Dark Forest. But The Trees Are Of A Particular Species, They Are Genealogical Trees.
Dark
Tree
Soul
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
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
To A Great Extent, Suffering Is A Sort Of Need Felt By The Organism To Make Itself Familiar With A New State, Which Makes It Uneasy, To Adapt Its Sensibility To That State.
Suffering
Needs
States
Let Us Leave Pretty Women To Men Devoid Of Imagination.
Women
Men
Imagination
They Like My Books Better In England Than In France; A Translation Would Be Very Successful There.
Book
Reading
Successful
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
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
Mean
Years
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 (our Friends Being Friends Only In The Light Of An Agreeable Folly Which Travels With Us Through Life And To Which We Readily Accommodate Ourselves, But Which At The Bottom Of Our Hearts We Know To Be No More Reasonable Than The Delusion Of The Man Who Talks To The Furniture Because He Believes That It Is Alive.).
Giving Up
Believe
Heart
In His Younger Days A Man Dreams Of Possessing The Heart Of The Woman Whom He Loves; Later, The Feeling That He Possesses The Heart Of A Woman May Be Enough To Make Him Fall In Love With Her.
Love
Dream
Fall
That Abominable And Sensual Act Called Reading The Newspaper, Thanks To Which All The Misfortunes And Cataclysms In The Universe Over The Last Twenty-four Hours, The Battles Which Cost The Lives Of Fifty-thousand Men, The Murders, The Strikes, The Bankruptcies, The Fires, The Poisonings, The Suicides, The Divorces, The Cruel Emotions Of Statesmen And Actors, Are Transformed For Us, Who Don't Even Care, Into A Morning Treat, Blending In Wonderfully, In A Particularly Exciting And Tonic Way, With The Recommended Ingestion Of A Few Sips Of Cafe Au Lait.
Suicide
Morning
Reading
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
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
All The Mind's Activity Is Easy If It Is Not Subjected To Reality.
Reality
Mind
Easy
The Most Powerful Soporific Is Sleep Itself.
Powerful
Sleep
Most Powerful
Lies Are Essential To Humanity.
Lying
Humanity
Essentials
Each Reader Reads Only What Is Already Within Himself. The Book Is Only A Sort Of Optical Instrument Which The Writer Offers To The Reader To Enable The Latter To Discover In Himself What He Would Not Have Found But For The Aid Of The Book.
Book
Aids
Found
The Real Voyage Of Discovery Consists Not In Seeking New Landscapes, But In Having New Eyes.
Inspirational
Life
Positive
We Love Only What We Do Not Wholly Possess.
French Love
For Every Sin There Is Forgiveness, And Especially For The Sins Of Youth.
Youth
Sin
Not Caring For Their Lives' Is It? Why, What In The World Is There That We Should Care For If It's Not Our Lives, The Only Gift The Lord Never Offers Us A Second Time.
Caring
World
Care
That Translucent Alabaster Of Our Memories.
Memories
Our Memories
For A Long Time I Would Go To Bed Early. [fr., Longtemps, Je Me Suis Couche De Bonne Heure.]
Book
Long
Bed
Remembrance Of Things Past Is Not Necessarily The Remembrance Of Things As They Were.
Memories
Past
Remembrance
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
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
When I Went To Venice I Found That My Dream Had Become-incredibly, But Quite Simply-my Address.
Dream
Venice
Addresses
The Charms Of The Passing Woman Are Generally In Direct Ratio To The Swiftness Of Our Passage.
Literature
Swiftness
Charm
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
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
We Construct Our Lives For One Person, And When At Length It Is Ready To Receive Her That Person Does Not Come; Presently She Is Dead To Us, And We Live On, Prisoners Within The Walls Which Were Intended Only For Her.
Wall
Doe
Length
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
The Great Quality Of True Art Is That It Rediscovers, Grasps And Reveals To Us That Reality Far From Where We Live, From Which We Get Farther And Farther Away As The Conventional Knowledge We Substitute For It Becomes Thicker And More Impermeable.
Art
Reality
Quality
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
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
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
Thanks To Art, Instead Of Seeing One World Only, Our Own, We See That World Multiply Itself And We Have At Our Disposal As Many Worlds As There Are Original Artists, Worlds More Different One From The Other Than Those Which Revolve In Infinite Space, Worlds Which, Centuries After The Extinction Of The Fire From Which Their Light First Emanated, Whether It Is Called Rembrandt Or Vermeer, Send Us Still Each One Its Special Radiance.
Art
Space
Fire
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
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
On Devient Moral De' S Qu'on Est Malheureux. We Become Moral Once We Are Miserable.
Moral
Miserable
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
In A Separation It Is The One Who Is Not Really In Love Who Says The More Tender Things.
Love
Reality
Literature
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
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
We Only Really Know What Is New, What Suddenly Introduces To Our Sensibility A Change Of Tone Which Strikes Us, That For Which Habit Has Not Yet Substituted Its Pale Fac-similes.
Tone
Introducing
Habit
Those Whose Suffering Is Due To Love Are, As We Say Of Certain Invalids, Their Own Physicians.
Suffering
Physicians
Certain
She Was "a Woman Of Uncertain Age.
Age
Uncertain
Lies Are Essential To Humanity. They Are Perhaps As Important As The Pursuit Of Pleasure And Moreover Are Dictated By That Pursuit.
Life
Success
Lying
Always Try To Keep A Patch Of Sky Above Your Life.
Sky
Trying
Patches
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
You Can't Learn The Truth About A Man's Intentions By Asking Him.
Men
Asking
Intention
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
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
Certainly, It Is More Reasonable To Devote One's Life To Women Than To Postage Stamps Or Old Snuff-boxes, Even To Pictures Or Statues. But The Example Of Other Collections Should Be A Warning To Us To Diversify, To Have Not One Woman Only But Several.
Women
Example
Warning
The Heart Does Not Lie.
Lying
Heart
Doe
Fashions, Being Themselves Begotten Of The Desire For Change, Are Quick To Change Also.
Fashion
Desire
This Dim Coolness Of My Room Was To The Broad Daylight Of The Street What The Shadow Is To The Sunbeam, That Is To Say Equally Luminous, And Presented To My Imagination The Entire Panorama Of Summer, Which My Senses, If I Had Been Out Walking, Could Have Tasted And Enjoyed Only Piecemeal; And So It Was Quite In Harmony With My State Of Repose Which (thanks To The Enlivening Adventures Related In My Books) Sustained, Like A Hand Reposing Motionless In A Stream Of Running Water, The Shock And Animation Of A Torrent Of Activity.
Summer
Running
Book
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
Sometimes In This Life, Under The Stress Of An Exceptional Emotion, People Do Say What They Think.
Honesty
Stress
Thinking
Existence Is Of Little Interest Save On Days When The Dust Of Realities Is Mingled With Magic Sand.
Reality
Dust
Magic
Our Worst Fears, Like Our Greatest Hopes, Are Not Outside Our Powers, And We Can Come In The End To Triumph Over The Former And To Achieve The Latter.
Triumph
Achieve
Ends
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
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
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
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
The Places We Have Known Do Not Belong Solely To The World Of Space In Which We Situate Them For Our Greater Convenience. They Were Only A Thin Slice Among Contiguous Impressions Which Formed Our Life At That Time; The Memory Of A Certain Image Is But Regret For A Certain Moment; And Houses, Roads, Avenues Are As Fleeting, Alas, As The Years.
Memories
Regret
Years
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
The Tiny, Initial Clue ... By Allowing Us To Imagine What We Do Not Know, Stimulates A Desire For Knowledge.
Knowledge
Desire
Tiny
Things Don't Change, But By And By Our Wishes Change.
Friendship
Change
Perspective
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
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
People
Frustrated
An Hour Is Not Merely An Hour, It Is A Vase Full Of Scents And Sounds And Projects And Climates.
Sound
Climate
Scent
Love Is A Reciprocal Torture.
Love
Literature
Torture
...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
There's Nothing Like Desire To Prevent The Things One Says From Having Any Resemblance To The Things In One's Mind.
Mind
Desire
Resemblance
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
Le Veritable Voyage De Decouverte Ne Consiste Pas A Chercher De Nouveaux Paysages, Mais A Avoir De Nouveaux Yeux. (the Real Voyage Of Discovery Consists Not In Seeking New Landscapes But In Having New Eyes.)
Real
Eye
Discovery
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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