Status Updates From All'ombra delle fanciulle i...

I’m back to this night ritual of reading Proust before bed. This time, I’m not trying to read for half an hour. Nope, just a single page a day. At this rate, I’ll finish volume II in late Feb, 2027 😂. Not bad, considering I’d last touched this book in 2023 and my new goal is actually doable.

quel che le persone hanno fatto, lo rifanno indefinitamente.

Ma non deve
assolutamente rimpiangerlo, perché non può essere certo d’esser
diventato un saggio, nella misura in cui questo è possibile, se non è
passato attraverso tutte le incarnazioni ridicole o odiose che devono
precedere quest’ultima incarnazione.

Non c’è uomo, per quanto
saggio», mi disse, «che in un certo periodo della sua giovinezza non
abbia pronunciato parole, o anche condotto una vita, il cui ricordo
non gli sia spiacevole e che desidererebbe cancellare.

“It is true that Gilberte was an only child, but there were, at the least, two Gilbertes. The two natures, her father's and her mother's, did more than just blend themselves in her; they disputed the possession of her.”

“It is, of course, common knowledge that a child takes after both its father and its mother. And yet the distribution of the qualities and defects which it inherits is so oddly planned that, of two good qualities which seemed inseparable in one of the parents, only one will be found in the child, and allied to the very fault in the other parent which seemed most irreconcilable with it.”

“Highly strung people ought always to love, as the lower orders say, 'beneath' them, so that their women have a material inducement to be at their disposal."