Everything we think of as great has come to us from neurotics. It is they and they alone who found religions and create great works of art. The world will never realize how much it owes to them and what they have suffered in order to bestow their gifts on it.
Le Cote de Guermantes (The GuermantesWay) pt. 1 (1921). George Seldes, The Great Thoughts, quotes Ramon Guthrie: "This passage was meant to show what fools people who are capable of uttering such idiocies are... . It is slap-stick irony that Proust puts into the mouth of a fool (Boulbon) in order to show what a fool he was."
