wordwhile

[wordwhile]

. . . since the view from my window was not of the countryside or a streetscape but of the wide wilderness of the sea, since I could hear its restless echoes during the hours of darkness and entrusted my own rest to them each night as I fell asleep, as though venturing out in a boat, I harbored the illusion that this close relationship with the waves must imbue my mind unawares with the sense of their charm, as though it was one of those lessons you can learn in your sleep.

Marcel Proust, In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower, trans. by James Grieve

#Marcel Proust #in the shadow of young girls in flower #translated #sea #landscape #charm #classic literature #classic quotes #classic books #classic lit #book quotes #quotes #quoteoftheday #quotesdaily

[wordwhile]

If somebody had turned up at the Rivebelle restaurant with the intention of killing me on one of the evenings when we stayed on there, when my grandmother, my life to come, and my unwritten books had all shrunk to a remote unreality, when I had no mind to give anything but the fragrance of the woman at the next table, the courtesies of the headwaiter, the outlines of the waltz tune being played, when I was glutted with the present sensation and had no existence beyond it, no wish except to be separated from it, I would have died in its embrace, I would have let myself be torn limb from limb, without raising a hand to defend myself, like a bee so bemused by tobacco smoke that it has lost its intent to garner away the supplies its efforts have gathered, and all hope of ever reaching the hive.

Marcel Proust, In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower, trans. by James Grieve

#Marcel Proust #in the shadow of young girls in flower #translated #atmosphere #happiness #death #classic literature #classic quotes #classic lit #classic books #book quotes #quotes #quoteoftheday #quotesdaily

[wordwhile]

Nightfall and a coach traveling fast, in the country or in town, are all that any female torso requires, mutilated like an ancient marble by our speeding departure and the concealing dusk, standing at a streetcorner and in every lighted shop, shooting the arrows of Beauty at our heart, and making us wonder at times whether Beauty in this world is ever anything other than the makeweight that our imagination, overwrought by regret, adds to a fragmentary and fleeting passerby.

Marcel Proust, In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower, trans. by James Grieve

#Marcel Proust #in the shadow of young girls in flower #translated #perception #beauty #imagination #heart #regret #classic literature #classic quotes #classic books #classic lit #book quotes #quotes #quoteoftheday #quotesdaily

[wordwhile]

It is those parts of us, even the most insubstantial and obscure of them, such as our attachment to the dimensions or the atmosphere of a particular room, which take fright, withhold consent, and engage in rebellions that must be seen as a covert and partial yet tangible and true mode of resistance to death that lengthy, desperate, daily resistance to the sporadic but nonstop dying which attends us throughout our lives, stripping off bits of us at every moment, which have no sooner mortified than new cells begin to grow.

Marcel Proust, In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower, trans. by James Grieve

#Marcel Proust #in the shadow of young girls in flower #translated #habit #classic literature #classic quotes #classic books #classic lit #book quotes #quotes #quoteoftheday #quotesdaily

[wordwhile]

As our attentiveness furnishes a room, so habit unfurnishes it, making space in it for us.

Marcel Proust, In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower, trans. by James Grieve

#Marcel Proust #in the shadow of young girls in flower #translated #attention #habit #space #classic quotes #classic literature #classic lit #classic books #book quotes #quotes #quoteoftheday #quotesdaily

[wordwhile]

But the fact is that a great book is not just the sum of existing masterpieces; it is particular and unforeseeable, made out of something which, because it lies somewhere beyond that existing sum, cannot be deduced simply from acquaintance with it, however close.

Marcel Proust, In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower, trans. by James Grieve

#Marcel Proust #in the shadow of young girls in flower #translated #books #classic literature #classic quotes #classic lit #classic books #book quotes #quotes #quoteoftheday #quotesdaily

[wordwhile]

. . . I glimpsed in the windowpane, above a little black copse, serrated clouds of downy softness in a shade of immutable pink, dead and as seemingly indelible now as the pink inseparable from feathers in a wing, or a pastel dyed by the fancy of a painter. But in this shade I sensed neither inertia nor fancy, only necessity and life.

Marcel Proust, In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower, trans. by James Grieve

#Marcel Proust #in the shadow of young girls in flower #translated #color #sky #classic literature #classic lit #classic quotes #classic books #book quotes #quotes #quoteoftheday #quotesdaily

[wordwhile]

The time we have to spend each day is elastic: it is stretched by the passions we feel; it is shrunk by those we inspire; and all of it is filled by habit.

Marcel Proust, In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower, trans. by James Grieve

#Marcel Proust #in the shadow of young girls in flower #translated #habit #time #passion #inspiration #classic literature #classic lit #classic quotes #classic books #book quotes #quotes #quoteoftheday #quotesdaily

[wordwhile]

When we are in love, our love is too vast to be wholly contained within ourselves; it radiates outward, reaches the resistant surface of the loved one, which reflects it back to its starting point; and this of our own tenderness is what we see of the other’s feelings, working their new, enhanced charm on us, because we do not recognize them as having originated in ourselves.

Marcel Proust, In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower, trans. by James Grieve

#Marcel Proust #in the shadow of young girls in flower #translated #love #perception #classic literature #classic lit #classic quotes #classic books #book quotes #love quotes #quotes #quoteoftheday #quotesdaily

[wordwhile]

If we are to make reality endurable, we must all nourish a fantasy or two.

Marcel Proust, In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower, trans. by James Grieve

#Marcel Proust #in the shadow of young girls in flower #reality #translated #fantasy #classic literature #classic lit #classic quotes #classic books #book quotes #quotes #quoteoftheday #quotesdaily

[wordwhile]

Names are of course fanciful designers; the sketches they draw of people and places are such poor likenesses that we are often struck dumb when, instead of the world as we have imagined it, we are suddenly confronted by the world as we see it (which is not the real world, of course, as the senses are not much better at likenesses than the imagination; so we end up with approximate drawings of reality, which are at least as different from the seen world as the seen world was different from the imagined world).

Marcel Proust, In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower, trans. by James Grieve

#Marcel Proust #in the shadow of young girls in flower #translated #names #identity #imagination #reality #classic literature #classic lit #classic quotes #classic books #book quotes #quotes #quoteoftheday #quotesdaily

[wordwhile]

So, although that time of day, when I did not normally notice fine weather, cold air, and winter light, gave me the feeling of having just discovered them, they also felt like a mere preface to the eggs Béchamel, a sort of patina, an icy pink glaze added to the outside of that mysterious sanctum, the house where Mme Swann lived, inside which all would be warmth, perfumes, and flowers.

Marcel Proust, In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower, trans. by James Grieve

#Marcel Proust #in the shadow of young girls in flower #winter #midday #discovery #flowers #classic literature #classic lit #classic quotes #classic books #book quotes #quoteoftheday #quotesdaily #quotes #translated

[wordwhile]

Even so, each time society is briefly stable, those who make it up image that further change is ruled out, just as, having seen the advent of the telephone, they now wish to disbelieve in airplanes. And the philosophers of the daily press damn the former time, not only in its modes of pleasure, which they see as the epitome of decadence, but even in the work of its artists and thinkers, which they now see as worthless, as though it were inseparably linked to the constant inconstancies of the fashionable and the frivolous. The only thing that never changes is that there is always ‘something changing . . .’

Marcel Proust, In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower, trans. by James Grieve

#Marcel Proust #in the shadow of young girls in flower #society #change #classic literature #classic lit #classic quotes #classic books #book quotes #quotes #quoteoftheday #quotesdaily #translated

[wordwhile]

. . . for they leave us more unstable, unable to grasp them or possess them, whereas this [smell] was of a denser consistency, reliable, delightful, peaceful, pregnant with a lasting truthfulness which was as inexplicable as it was undeniable.

Marcel Proust, In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower, trans. by James Grieve

#Marcel Proust #in the shadow of young girls in flower #scent #truth #honesty #classic literature #classic quotes #book quotes #classic lit #classic books #quotes #quoteoftheday #quotesdaily #translated

[wordwhile]

She could never be a saint, but she thought she could be a martyr if they killed her quick.

Flannery O’Connor, “A Temple of the Holy Ghost” from The Complete Stories

#flannery o'connor #saint #Religion #death #quotes #quoteoftheday #quotesdaily

[wordwhile]

. . . for she lay in love with the deep-whirling river.

Homer, The Iliad, trans. by Richard Lattimore

#Homer #the iliad #sex #classic lit #classic quotes #classic literature #book quotes #quotes #quoteoftheday #quotesdaily

[wordwhile]

It were too much toil for me, as if I were a god, to tell all this, / for all about the stone wall the inhuman strength of the fire / was rising. . . .

Homer, The Iliad, trans. by Richard Lattimore

#Homer #the iliad #war #classic lit #classic literature #classic quotes #book quotes #quotes #quoteoftheday #quotesdaily