Words at the Turning of the Year

We are enjoying this new year holiday together.  Truthfully, we are almost childishly surprised and pleased by our own happiness on this winter day.

I am aware that it is the custom to offer some kind of words of review or perspective as the year turns, but I don't seem to feel very wise -- only softly contented.  So, let me offer some words from Marcel Proust, who seems to me to have been peering into our lives in this passage:

Happiness is beneficial for the body, but it is grief that develops the powers of the mind.

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.

Love is a reciprocal torture.

All our final decisions are made in a state of mind that is not going to last.

If a little dreaming is dangerous, the cure for it is not to dream less but to dream more, to dream all the time.

Illness is the doctor to whom we pay most heed; to kindness, to knowledge, we make promise only; pain we obey.

Happiness serves hardly any other purpose than to make unhappiness possible.

People can have many different kinds of pleasure. The real one is that for which they will forsake the others.

People wish to learn to swim and at the same time to keep one foot on the ground.

We must never be afraid to go too far, for truth lies beyond.