| Confessions questions |
Confidences questions |
Proust's answers 1890 |
|---|---|---|
| Your favorite virtue |
The principal aspect of my personality |
The need to be loved; more precisely, the need to be caressed and spoiled much more than the need to be admired |
| Your favorite qualities in a man. |
The quality that I desire in a man. |
Feminine charms. |
| Your favorite qualities in a woman. |
The quality that I desire in a woman. |
Manly virtues, and frankness in friendship. |
| Your chief characteristic |
||
| What you appreciate the most in your friends |
What I appreciate most about my friends. |
To have tenderness for me, if their personage is exquisite enough to render quite high the price of their tenderness |
| Your main fault |
My main fault |
Not knowing, not being able to "want". |
| Your favourite occupation. |
My favorite occupation. |
Loving. |
| Your idea of happiness |
My dream of happiness. |
I am afraid it be not great enough, I dare not speak it, I am afraid of destroying it by speaking it. |
| Your idea of misery. |
What would be my greatest misfortune? |
Not to have known my mother or my grandmother. |
| If not yourself, who would you be? |
What I should like to be. |
Myself, as the people whom I admire would like me to be. |
| Where would you like to live? |
The country where I should like to live. |
A country where certain things that I should like would come true as though by magic, and where tenderness would always be reciprocated |
| Your favourite colour and flower. |
My favourite colour. |
The beauty is not in the colours, but in their harmony. |
| The flower that I like. |
Hers/His - and after, all of them.[1] |
|
| My favorite bird. |
The swallow. |
|
| Your favorite prose authors. |
My favorite prose authors. |
Currently, Anatole France and Pierre Loti. |
| Your favorite poets. |
My favorite poets. |
Baudelaire and Alfred de Vigny. |
| Your favorite heroes in fiction. |
My heroes in fiction. |
Hamlet. |
| Your favorite heroines in fiction. |
My favorite heroines in fiction. |
Bérénice. |
| Your favorite painters and composers. |
My favorite composers. |
Beethoven, Wagner, Schumann. |
| My favorite painters. |
Leonardo da Vinci, Rembrandt. |
|
| Your heroes in real life. |
My heroes in real life. |
Mr. Darlu, Mr. Boutroux. |
| Your favorite heroines in real life. |
||
| What characters in history do you most dislike. |
||
| Your heroines in World history |
My heroines in history. |
Cleopatra. |
| Your favorite food and drink. |
||
| Your favorite names. |
My favorite names. |
I only have one at a time. |
| What I hate the most. |
What I hate most of all. |
What is bad about me. |
| World history characters I hate the most |
Historical figures that I despise the most. |
I am not educated enough. |
| The military event I admire the most |
The military event that I admire most. |
My military service! |
| The reform I admire the most |
The reform which I admire the most. |
|
| The natural talent I'd like to be gifted with |
The gift of nature that I would like to have. |
Will-power, and seductiveness. |
| How I wish to die |
How I want to die. |
Improved—and loved. |
| What is your present state of mind. |
My present state of mind. |
Boredom from having thought about myself to answer all these questions. |
| For what fault have you most toleration? |
Faults for which I have the most indulgence. |
Those that I understand. |
| Your favorite motto. |
My motto. |
I should be too afraid that it bring me misfortune. |
