Cattleya - Marcel Proust

Marcel Proust

The phrase "to do a cattleya" is used as a playful euphemism for amorous fondling by the characters Odette and Swann in Marcel Proust's Remembrance of Things Past.

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    Time passes, and little by little everything that we have spoken in falsehood becomes true.
    Marcel Proust (1871–1922)

    As the Arab proverb says, ‘The dog barks and the caravan passes’. After having dropped this quotation, Mr. Norpois stopped to judge the effect it had on us. It was great; the proverb was known to us: it had been replaced that year among men of high worth by this other: ‘Whoever sows the wind reaps the storm’, which had needed some rest since it was not as indefatigable and hardy as, ‘Working for the King of Prussia’.
    Marcel Proust (1871–1922)

    The moments of the past do not remain still; they retain in our memory the motion which drew them towards the future, towards a future which has itself become the past, and draw us on in their train.
    Marcel Proust (1871–1922)

    I waited alone, in the company of orchids, roses and violets who—like people waiting beside you, but to whom you are unknown—maintained a silence which their individuality of living things rendered more imposing and in their chilly manner received the heat from an incandescent coal fire, preciously placed behind a crystal glass, in a white marble tub where it dropped, from time to time, its dangerous rubies.
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    I perceived that to express those impressions, to write that essential book, which is the only true one, a great writer does not, in the current meaning of the word, invent it, but, since it exists already in each one of us, interprets it. The duty and the task of a writer are those of an interpreter.
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