Oldhomehaibane

“Were it not for habit, life would seem delightful to beings constantly under threat of dying, in other words to all humankind.”
― Marcel Proust, In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower

“It is always during a passing state of mind that we make lasting resolutions.”
― Marcel Proust

“The mystery of esthetic like that of material creation is accomplished. The artist, like the god of the creation, remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails.”
― James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

“A person does not, as I had imagined, stand motionless and clear before our eyes with his merits, his defects, his plans, his intentions with regard to ourselves (like a garden at which we gaze through a railing with all its borders spread out before us), but is a shadow which we can never penetrate, of which there can be no such thing as direct knowledge, with respect to which we form countless beliefs, based upon words and sometimes actions, neither of which can give us anything but inadequate and as it proves contradictory information — a shadow behind which we can alternately imagine with equal justification, that there burns the flame of hatred and of love.”
― Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way