Allusion has been made to [Proust's] contempt for the literature that "describes," for the realists and naturalists worshipping th...e offal of experience, prostrate before the epidermis and the swift epilepsy, and content to transcribe the surface, the façade, behind which the Idea is prisoner.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There is then creative reading as well as creative writing. When the mind is braced by labor and invention, the page of whatever b...ook we read becomes luminous with manifold allusion. Every sentence is doubly significant, and the sense of our author is as broad as the world.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
An accent mark, perhaps, instead of a whole western accent--a point of punctuation rather than a uniform twang. That is how it sho...uld be worn: as a quiet point of character reference, an apt phrase of sartorial allusion--macho, sotto voce.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
[T]he syndrome known as life is too diffuse to admit of palliation. For every symptom that is eased, another is made worse. The ho...rse leech's daughter is a closed system. Her quantum of wantum cannot vary.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When much intercourse with a friend has supplied us with a standard of excellence, and has increased our respect for the resources... of God who thus sends a real person to outgo our ideal; when he has, moreover, become an object of thought, and, whilst his character retains all its unconscious effect, is converted in the mind into solid and sweet wisdom,--it is a sign to us that his office is closing, and he is commonly withdrawn from our sight in a short time.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »