Seven Quotes From Marcel Proust.

Marcel Proust (pronounced Prewst)
was a French author of the early
20th century. He's most famous for
a very long book (2200 pages) entitled, REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST.

The book isn't easy to read. Proust
delighted in long sentences that
looped and folded back on themselves. Yet the book is full of
magical insights into human nature
and the human condition; passages
that jump out at you, and beg you
to pay attention to them.

I read REMEMBRANCE in 1977, and culled at least a hundred insightful
quotations from it. I'm going to share seven of those quotes with you
today. I hope some of them resonate
with you.


1) "In many moments of our life, we
would barter the whole of our future
for a power that is, in itself, insignificant."

2) "Some people, either from lack of
energy of else from a resigned sense
of the obligation laid upon them by
their social grandeur, remain moored
like houseboats to a certain point
on the bank of the stream of life,
and they abstain from the pleasures
which are offered to them above and
below that point, that degreee in life in which they will remain fixed
until the day of their death."

3) "It is the terrible deception of love that it begins by engaging us in play, not with a woman of the external world, but with a puppet
fashioned and kept in our brain, the
only form of her, moreover, that we
have always at our disposal, the only one that we shall ever possess,
an artificial creation to which,
by degrees, and to our own hurt, we
shall force the real woman into
resemblance."

4) "An hour is not merely an hour. It is a vase filled with perfumes,
sounds, plans, and climates. What we
call reality is a certain relationship between these sensations and the memories which surround us at the time."

5) Anything we have not had to decipher and clarify by our own personal experience, anything that was clear before we intervened, is not our own. Nothing comes from ourselves but that which we draw out
of the obscurity within us, and which is unknown to others."

6) "We can never be certain that the
good fortune which comes to us too
late, is altogether the same as that
good fortune, the want of which made
us, at one time, so unhappy. There is only one person who could decide that -- our ego of those days. He is
no longer with us, and were he to
reappear, no doubt that would be quite enough to make our good fortune -- whether identical or not -- vanish."

7) "I can think of nothing that can
so effectively as a kiss, evoke from
what we believe to be a thing with one definite aspect, the hundred other things which it may equally
well be, since each is related to a
view of it no less legitimate."

.................................
©†ƒ……•™¼‡_Original_Message_¾€š½ž¢«»¬ï°©

Marcel Proust (pronounced Prewst)
was a French author of the early
20th century. He's most famous for
a very long book (2200 pages) entitled, REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST.

The book isn't easy to read. Proust
delighted in long sentences that
looped and folded back on themselves. Yet the book is full of
magical insights into human nature
and the human condition; passages
that jump out at you, and beg you
to pay attention to them.

I read REMEMBRANCE in 1977, and culled at least a hundred insightful
quotations from it. I'm going to share seven of those quotes with you
today. I hope some of them resonate
with you.


1) "In many moments of our life, we
would barter the whole of our future
for a power that is, in itself, insignificant."

2) "Some people, either from lack of
energy of else from a resigned sense
of the obligation laid upon them by
their social grandeur, remain moored
like houseboats to a certain point
on the bank of the stream of life,
and they abstain from the pleasures
which are offered to them above and
below that point, that degreee in life in which they will remain fixed
until the day of their death."

3) "It is the terrible deception of love that it begins by engaging us in play, not with a woman of the external world, but with a puppet
fashioned and kept in our brain, the
only form of her, moreover, that we
have always at our disposal, the only one that we shall ever possess,
an artificial creation to which,
by degrees, and to our own hurt, we
shall force the real woman into
resemblance."

4) "An hour is not merely an hour. It is a vase filled with perfumes,
sounds, plans, and climates. What we
call reality is a certain relationship between these sensations and the memories which surround us at the time."

5) Anthing we have not had to decipher and clarify by our own personal experience, anything that was clear before we intervened, is not our own. Nothing comes from ourselves but that which we draw out
of the obscurity within us, and which is unknown to others."

6) "We can never be certain that the
good fortune which comes to us too
late, is altogether the same as that
good fortune, the want of which made
us, at one time, so unhappy. There is only one person who could decide that -- our ego of those days. He is
no longer with us, and were he to
reappear, no doubt that would be quite enough to make our good fortune -- whether identical or not -- vanish."

7) "I can think of nothing that can
so effectively as a kiss, evoke from
what we believe to be a thing with one definite aspect, the hundred other things which it may equally
well be, since each is related to a
view of it no less legitimate."

.................................
is a v