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"As though on a seedling whose blossoms ripen at different times, I had seen in old ladies, on that beach at Balbec, the dried-up seeds and sagging tubers that my girl-friends would become. But, now that it was time for buds to blossom, what did that matter?"
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"...but the loss of a memory, like the omission of a phrase during reading, rather than making for uncertainty, can lead to a premature certainty."
Memory

"People can have many different kinds of pleasure. The real one is that for which they will forsake the others."
People

"But one never finds a cathedral, a wave in a storm, a dancer's leap in the air quite as high as one has been expecting."
Experience

"And so too, in later years, when I began to write a book of my own, and the quality of some sentences seemed so inadequate that I could not make up my mind to go on with the undertaking. I would find the equivalent in Bergotte. But it was only then, when I read them in his pages, that I could enjoy them; when it was I myself who composed them, in my anxiety that they should exactly reproduce what I had perceived in my mind's eye, and in my fear of their not turning out "true to life," how could I find time to ask myself whether what I was writing was pleasing!"
Creativity

"I never allow myself to be influenced in the smallest degree either by atmospheric disturbances or by the arbitrary divisions of what is known as Time."
Philosophy

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

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

"The fixity of a habit is generally in direct proportion to its absurdity."
Psychology

"... even in his most artificial creations, nature is the material upon which man has to work; certain spots will persist in remaining surrounded by the vassals of their own special sovereignty, and will raise their immemorial standards among all the 'laid-out' scenery of a park, just as they would have done far from any human interference, in a solitude which must everywhere return to engulf them, springing up out of the necessities of their exposed position, and superimposing itself upon the work of man's hands."
Nature

"People are not always very tolerant of the tears which they themselves have provoked."
Emotion
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"Sixty-nine was an interesting age--an age of infinite possibilities--an age when at last the experience of a lifetime was beginning to tell. But to feel old--that was different, a tired, discouraged state of mind when one was inclined to ask oneself depressing questions. What was he after all? A little dried-up elderly man, with neither chick nor child, with no human belongings, only a valuable Art collection which seemed at the moment strangely unsatisfying. No one to care whether he lived or died..."
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Personal Development

"Old age is catching up with me, or am I catching up with it?"
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Personal Development

"Age is always advancing and I'm fairly sure it's up to no good."
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Personal Development

"Oh, once you've been initiated into the Elderly, the world doesn't want you back. Veronica settled herself in a rattan chair and adjusted her hat just so. "We-by whom I mean anyone over sixty-commit two offenses just by existing. One is Lack of Velocity. We drive too slowly, walk too slowly, talk too slowly. The world will do business with dictators, perverts, and drug barons of all stripes, but being slowed down it cannot abide. Our second offence is being Everyman's memento mori. The world can only get comfy in shiny-eyed denial if we are out of sight."
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Personal Development

"I spent my life learning to feel less. Every day I felt less. Is that growing old? Or is it something worse?"
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Personal Development

"Let us cherish and love old age; for it is full of pleasure if one knows how to use it. Fruits are most welcome when almost over; youth is most charming at its close; the last drink delights the toper, the glass which souses him and puts the finishing touch on his drunkenness. Each pleasure reserves to the end the greatest delights which it contains. Life is most delightful when it is on the downward slope, but has not yet reached the abrupt decline."
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Personal Development

"The good thing about being old is not being young."
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Personal Development

"I am growing old enough not to care much for the MANNER of doing things."
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Personal Development

"Some people do not really hate aging, they merely love the colour black."
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Personal Development

"An old codger rampant and still learning."
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Personal Development
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