Jade

“Desire makes everything blossom; possession makes everything wither and fade. ”
― Marcel Proust

“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.”
― Marcel Proust, Time Regained

“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.”
― Marcel Proust

“I am I and my circumstance; and, if I do not save it, I do not save myself.”
― José Ortega y Gasset, Meditations on Quixote