Notebook of a Bibliophile
The taste for books grows with intelligence.
Erudition "nourishes genius rather than suffocating it, like a bundle of kindling that extinguishes a small fire but makes a large fire burn stronger".
Scholars remain, in spite of everything, the people with quality of intelligence, and to be ignorant of certain books, certain particularities of literary science, will always remain, even in a man of genius, a mark of intellectual plebeianism.
Three citations by
Proust found among those of several other writers. L'Éclair, 28 May 1922. Their authenticity is not certified by
any indication of provenance.