In reality, every reader, as he reads, is actually the reader of himself. The writer’s work is only a kind of optical instrument he provides the reader so he can discern what he might never have seen in himself without this book. The reader’s recognition in himself of what the book says is the proof of the book’s truth.
[En réalité, chaque lecteur est quand il lit le propre lecteur de soi-même. L’ouvrage de l’écrivain n’est qu’une espèce d’instrument optique qu’il offre au lecteur afin de lui permettre de discerner ce que sans ce livre il n’eût peut-être pas vu en soi-même. La reconnaissance en soi-même, par le lecteur, de ce que dit le livre, est la preuve de la vérité de celui-ci.]
Marcel Proust (1871-1922) French author
Le Temps Retrouvé [Time Regained], ch. 22 (1926) [tr. Moncrieff/Kilmartin]
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Quotations about:
know thyself
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Thy greatest Wisdom consists in being acquainted with thy own Follies.
Thomas Fuller (1654-1734) English physician, preacher, aphorist, writer
Introductio ad Prudentiam, Vol. 2, # 1882 (1727)
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To become different from what we are, we must have some awareness of what we are.
Eric Hoffer (1902-1983) American writer, philosopher, longshoreman
Passionate State of Mind, Aphorism 151 (1955)
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