"Let us be grateful to people who make us happy, they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom."
"I shall not find a painting more beautiful because the artist has painted a hawthorn in the foreground, though I know of nothing more beautiful than the hawthorn, for I wish to remain sincere and because I know that the beauty of a painting does not depend on the things represented in it. I shall not collect images of hawthorn. I do not venerate hawthorn, I go to see and smell it."
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Source: Marcel Proust's preface (1910) to John Ruskin The Bible of Amiens translated by Marcel Proust (1904); later quoted in Marcel Proust: On Reading Ruskin translated by Jean Autret and Philip J. Wolfe (p. 57), 1987.
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"The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes."
"Do not wait for life. Do not long for it. Be aware, always and at every moment, that the miracle is in the here and now."
"My destination is no longer a place, rather a new way of seeing."
"When you work to please others you can't succeed, but the things you do to satisfy yourself stand a chance of catching someone's interest."
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