An artist has no need to express his mind directly in his work for it to express the quality of that mind; it has indeed been said that the highest p… - Marcel Proust

The highest praise of God consists in the denial of him by the atheist who finds creation so perfect that it can dispense with a creator.

Seus longos olhos azuis - mais alongados - não tinham guardado a mesma forma; continuavam sim da mesma cor, mas pareciam ter passado ao estado líquido. A tal ponto que, quando os fechava, era como quando com cortinas se impede de ver o mar.

Most of the supposed expressions of our feelings merely relieve us of them by drawing them out of us in an indistinct form that does not teach us to know them.

Compared with that of a great artist, the friendliness of a great nobleman, however charming it may be, seems like play-acting, like simulation. Saint-Loup sought to please; Elstir loved to give, to give himself. Everything he possessed, ideas, works, and the rest which he counted for far less, he would have given gladly to anyone who understood him. But, for lack of congenial company, he lived in an unsociable isolation which fashionable people call pose and ill-breeding, the authorities a recalcitrant spirit, his neighbours madness, his family selfishness and pride.