The sublime face of true goodness

And quite possibly, this lack (or seeming lack) of participation by a person's soul in the virtue of which he or she is the agent has, apart from its aesthetic meaning, a reality which, if not strictly psychological, may at least be called physiognomical. Since then, whenever in the course of my life I have come across, in convents for instance, truly saintly embodiments of practical charity, they have generally had the cheerful, practical, brusque and unemotioned air of a busy surgeon, the sort of face in which one can discern no commiseration, no tenderness at the sight of suffering humanity, no fear of hurting, the impassive, unsympathetic, sublime face of true goodness.


Often he needs many lines to make his point. Even when it doesn't run to extraordinary lengths, his wordiness can easily try one's patience. As already seen, sometimes the sentence is simply too long. Other times, however, the depth grows with the length. Strip Proust of his wordiness and you, sometimes, strip him of his stentorian meaning.