Carl

“When we are in love with a woman we simply project on to her a state of our own soul; that consequently the important thing is not the worth of the women but the profundity of the state; and that the emotions which a perfectly ordinary girl arouses in us can enable us to bring to the surface of our consciousness some of the innermost parts of our being, more personal, more remote, more quintessential that any that might might be evoked by the pleasure we derive from the conversation of a great man or even from the admiring contemplation of his work.”
― Marcel Proust, Within a Budding Grove, Part 2

“Sunrise is a necessary concomitant of long railway journeys, like hard-boiled eggs, illustrated papers, packs of cards, rivers upon which boats strain but make no progress.”
― Marcel Proust, Within a Budding Grove, Part 2

“It is our noticing them that puts things in a room, our growing used to them that takes them away again and clears a space for us.”
― Marcel Proust, Within a Budding Grove, Part 2

“Here was a woman about the year 1800 writing without hate, without bitterness, without fear, without protest, without preaching. That was how Shakespeare wrote, I thought, looking at Antony and Cleopatra; and when people compare Shakespeare and Jane Austen, they may mean that the minds of both had consumed all impediments; and for that reason we do not know Jane Austen and we do not know Shakespeare, and for that reason Jane Austen pervades every word that she wrote, and so does Shakespeare.”
― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own