quote · Legacy record
...infirmity alone makes us take notice and learn, and enables us to analyse mechanisms of which otherwise we should know nothing. A man who falls straight into bed night after night, and ceases to live until the moment when he wakes and rises, will surely never dream of making, I don't say great discoveries, but even minor observations about sleep. He scarcely knows that he is asleep. A little insomnia is not without its value in making us appreciate sleep, in throwing a ray of light upon that darkness. An unfailing memory is not a very powerful incentive to the study of the phenomena of memory.
...infirmity alone makes us take notice and learn, and enables us to analyse mechanisms of which otherwise we should know nothing. A man who falls straight into bed night after night, and ceases to live until the moment when he wakes and rises, will surely never dream of making, I don't say great discoveries, but even minor observations about sleep. He scarcely knows that he is asleep. A little insomnia is not without its value in making us appreciate sleep, in throwing a ray of light upon that darkness. An unfailing memory is not a very powerful incentive to the study of the phenomena of memory.
Approximate author period: c. 1896 AD · industrial
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- Author or tradition
- Marcel Proust
Attribution: attributed - Country attributed
- Not established
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- Approximate author period: c. 1896 AD · industrial
Approximate author-period anchor from life dates 1871 to 1922; Wikidata Q7199, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7199 (accessed 2026-10-08). Not a quotation composition date.
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Supplied reference C; CSV row 198659; supplied attribution, independently unverified
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