The soldier is convinced that a certain indefinitely extendable time period is accorded him before he is killed, the burglar before he is caught, men in general, before they must die. That is the amulet which preserves individuals — and sometimes populations — not from danger, but from the fear of danger, in reality from the belief in danger, which in some cases allows them to brave it without being brave. Such a confidence, just as unfounded, supports the lover who counts on a reconciliation, a letter.

Proust had a close relationship with his mother. Literary historians and critics have ascertained that apart from Ruskin Proust's chief literary influences included Saint-Simon Montaigne Stendhal Flaubert George Eliot Fyodor Dostoevsky and Leo Tolstoy. Paris: Bernard Grasset:

1919 Pastiches et mélanges ("Pastiches and mixtures").

Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust (French pronunciation: ​[maʁsɛl pʁust]; 10 July 1871 – 18 November 1922) was a French novelist critic and essayist best known for his monumental novel À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time; earlier translated as Remembrance of Things Past).