I think that life would suddenly seem wonderful to us if we were threatened to die as you say. Just think of how many projects, travels, love affairs, studies, it—our life—hides from us, made invisible by our laziness which, sure of the future, delays them incessantly.

But let all this threaten to become impossible for ever, how beautiful it would become again! Ah!

- Marcel Proust, L'Intransigeant, 1922