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It is illness that makes us recognize that we do not live in isolation but are chained to a being from a different realm, worlds apart from us and by whom it is impossible to make ourselves understood: our body. Were we to meet a brigand on the road, we might manage to make him conscious of his own personal interest if not our plight. But to ask pity of our body is like talking to an octopus, for which our words can have no more meaning than the sound of the sea, and with which we should be terrified to find ourselves condemned to live.
It is illness that makes us recognize that we do not live in isolation but are chained to a being from a different realm, worlds apart from us and by whom it is impossible to make ourselves understood: our body. Were we to meet a brigand on the road, we might manage to make him conscious of his own personal interest if not our plight. But to ask pity of our body is like talking to an octopus, for which our words can have no more meaning than the sound of the sea, and with which we should be terrified to find ourselves condemned to live.
Approximate author period: c. 1896 AD · industrial
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- Author or tradition
- Marcel Proust
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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 329260; supplied attribution, independently unverified
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