Proust Quote:
“What a profound significance small things assume when the woman we love conceals them from us.”

We have come to the end of the days where I will answer any more Proust questions. I hope some people got something out of this little exercise. I will give special thanks to Angie, as she is the only person that either read these little essays or is the only person to have the testicular fortitude to also share her answers. I fear the lack of participation has dashed my hopes of playing this little parlor game at a tea party this Spring.

Since this is the last day, rather than throwing a bunch of words at one question I will answer all the remaining questions with just one or two words.

Your favorite virtue or The principal aspect of my personality:
Valor (of the Seven Holy Virtues)
Temperance (of the Eight Heavenly Virtues)
Prudence (of the Four Cardinal Virtues)
Love (of the Three Theological Virtues)

Your chief characteristic:
Veracity

If not yourself, who would you be? or What I should like to be:
Sorted out

My favorite bird:
Crow

Your favorite prose authors or My favorite prose authors:
Salinger

Your favorite heroines in fiction or My favorite heroines in fiction:
Autumn

My favorite composers:
Beethoven

My favorite painters:
Henning

Your heroes in real life or My heroes in real life:
Mom

What characters in history do you most dislike:
Lieberman

Your heroines in World history or My heroines in history:
Hepburn

Your favorite food and drink:
sauerkraut casserole & Pepsi

The military event I admire the most:
30,000

The reform I admire the most:
Health Care

How I wish to die or How I want to die:
Fearless

What is your present state of mind or My present state of mind:
Dull

For what fault have you most toleration? or Faults for which I have the most indulgence:
Inclinations

Before I click “Publish Post” and wish you a safe and Happy New Year, I would like to conclude this little exercise with some of my favorite Proust quotes that didn’t make it into any of the previous entries:

“A woman one loves rarely suffices for all our needs, so we deceive her with another whom we do not love.”

“As long as men are free to ask what they must, free to say what they think, free to think what they will, freedom can never be lost and science can never regress.”

“Every reader finds himself. The writer’s work is merely a kind of optical instrument that makes it possible for the reader to discern what, without his book, he would perhaps never have seen in himself.”

“Habit is a second nature which prevents us from knowing the first, of which it has neither the cruelties nor the enchantments.”

“Happiness is beneficial for the body, but it is grief that develops the powers of the mind.”

“In a separation it is the one who is not really in love who says the more tender things.”

“It is in moments of illness that we are compelled to recognize that we live not alone but chained to a creature of a different kingdom, whole worlds apart, who has no knowledge of us and by whom it is impossible to make ourselves understood: our body.”

“Let us be grateful to people who make us happy, they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.”

“Lies are essential to humanity. They are perhaps as important as the pursuit of pleasure and moreover are dictated by that pursuit.”

“Like everybody who is not in love, he thought one chose the person to be loved after endless deliberations and on the basis of particular qualities or advantages.”

“Love is space and time measured by the heart.”

“No exile at the South Pole or on the summit of Mont Blanc separates us more effectively from others than the practice of a hidden vice.”

“The charms of the passing woman are generally in direct proportion to the swiftness of her passing.”

“The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.”

“The time at our disposal each day is elastic; the passions we feel dilate it, those that inspire us shrink it, and habit fills it.”

“There is no man, however wise, who has not at some period of his youth said things, or lived in a way the consciousness of which is so unpleasant to him in later life that he would gladly, if he could, expunge it from his memory.”

“Those whose suffering is due to love are, as we say of certain invalids, their own physicians.”

“Three-quarters of the sickness of intelligent people come from their intelligence.”

“Time passes, and little by little everything we have spoken in falsehood becomes true.”

“Time, which changes people, does not alter the image we have retained of them.”

“We are healed from suffering only by experiencing it to the full.”

“We don’t receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us.”

“We must never be afraid to go too far, for truth lies beyond.”

I have just begun to read Swann’s Way. (It was a Christmas present along with Within a Budding Grove and The Guermantes Way!) If I can make it through this entire series, I might be ready to try to tackle Ulysses.

Now that this exercise has concluded, I will begin posting pictures from my latest photo projects very soon.