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 »
So all that is said of the wise man by Stoic or Oriental or modern essayist, describes to each reader his own idea, describes his ...unattained but attainable self.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Nature is a collective idea, and, though its essence exist in each individual of the species, can never in its perfection inhabit ...a single object.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I got it! The lead, the idea, the angle. It's the way, it's the only way. I'll, I'll be Jewish.... I've even got the title: "I Was... Jewish For Six Months."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Brutes gaze on sights, they are arrested by sounds; and what they see and what they hear are sights and sounds only. The intellect... of man, on the contrary, energises as well as his eye or ear, and perceives in sights or sounds something beyond them. It seizes and unites what the senses present to it; it grasps and forms what need not be seen or heard except in detail. It discerns in lines and colors, or in tones, what is beautiful and what is not. It gives them a meaning, and invests them with an idea.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When an idea is just rising on the horizon, the soul's temperature with respect to it is usually very cold. Only gradually does th...e idea develop its warmth, and it is hottest (which is to say, exerting its greatest influence) when belief in the idea is already once again in decline.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
O Kate, nice customs curtsy to great kings. Dear Kate, you and I cannot be confined within the weak list of a country's... fashion. We are the makers of manners, Kate.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »