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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“He admired the terrible recreative power of his memory. It was only with the weakening of this generator whose fecundity diminishes with age that he could hope for his torture to be appeased. But it appeared that the power to make him suffer of one of Odette’s statements seemed exhausted, then one of these statements on which Swann’s spirit had until then not dwelled, an almost new word relayed the others and struck him with new vigor.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“People who are not in love fail to understand how an intelligent man can suffer because of a very ordinary woman. This is like being surprised that anyone should be stricken with cholera because of a creature so insignificant as the common bacillus.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“‘... In truth I find it ridiculous that a man of his intelligence suffer over this type of person, who is not even interesting, for she is said to be foolish’, she added with all the wisdom of people who are not in love, who find that a sensible man should only be unhappy over a person who is worthwhile; it is almost tantamount to being surprised that anyone deign having cholera for having been infected with a creature as small as the vibrio bacilla.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“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.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“At a certain age, we have already been struck by love; it no longer develops alone, according to its own mysteries and fateful laws while our hearts stand by startled and passive. We come to its assistance ... Recognizing one of its symptoms, we recall, we bring back to life the others. Since we possess its song engraved in its totality within us, we do not need for a woman to tell us the beginning—filled with admiration inspired by beauty—to find the continuation.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)