Squibs

All of these are from or inspired by the final chapters of Alain de Botton's How Proust Can Change Your Life.

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Appreciating an object properly requires us to re-create it in our mind's eye. When you close your eyes and view something you seize upon its important details -- details that you would have previously *seen*, but not *noticed*.

Same holds true for relationships. It is impossible to love someone physically: you need imaginative possession -- dwelling on details.

With wealth and easy access, you are plagued by boredom because you have no opportunity to suffer the interval between desire and gratification.

Again, this holds true for both common objects and relationships. (This explains why prostitutes are unattractive -- not because of a lack of physical beauty, but because of excessive availability.)

The threat of infidelity and the injection of jealousy is the only thing capable of rescuing a relationship ruined by habit.

If you pay close enough attention you will notice how much of your life is a compulsive attempt to escape discomfort or pain.

In good books you can find experiences that you have never been more than semiconscious of raised and beautifully assembled in language. Good books can sensitize you to the visible world, the valuable yet neglected aspects of experience.

A genuine homage to an idol would look at our world though his eyes, not his world through ours.

"To make reading into a discipline is to give too large a role to what is only an incitement. Reading is on the threshold of the spiritual life; it can introduce us to it: it does not constitute it."

Death makes life safe. We would not want to live in a world without that option.