“Faced with the thoughts, the actions of a woman whom we love, we are as completely at a loss as the world's first natural philosophers must have been, face to face with the phenomena of nature, before their science had been elaborated and had cast a ray of light over the unknown.”
In Search of Lost Time, Remembrance of Things Past (1913-1927), Vol II: Within a Budding Grove (1919)
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Marcel Proust 41
French novelist, critic, and essayist 1871–1922Related quotes
“Before facing you enemy, you must first face yourself.”
Source: Bleach―ブリーチ― 33 [Burīchi 33]

“… I'm looking for the face I had, before the world was made…”

"Galtieri muses on what-if's of Falkland war" http://www.nytimes.com/1982/09/16/world/galtieri-muses-on-what-if-s-of-falkland-war.html, The New York Times (September 16, 1982)

The Future of Civilization (1938)
Context: During all the period before 1914, Europe and, in a degree, the whole world lived under the perpetual shadow of war, as we are doing, I am afraid, at the present time. No doubt after it had been going on for a certain time, people became callous. They thought war had been so often avoided that it would continue to be avoided. But nevertheless, all international policy was carried on on the basis that sooner or later war might and probably would have to be faced. This has again become true, and it casts its shadow over every form of human activity. The civil life of every nation is deformed and weakened and obstructed by this threat of war. We are wasting gigantic sums, sums far greater than we have ever wasted before, on preparations for war, because war has again become a very present possibility and, at the same time, its horrors and dangers are enormously greater than they were before 1914.
Source: Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

“I have had a life in which I have had to face every big fear, and it has not been pleasant.”
cubanet.org (May 15, 2000)
2007, 2008