But when from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, taste and smell alone, more fragile but more enduring, more unsubstantial, more persistent, more faithful, remain poised a long time, like souls, remembering, waiting, hoping, amid the ruins of all the rest; and bear unflinchingly, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection.
Marcel Proust, À la recherche du temps perdu [lit. In search of lost time, trans. as Remembrance of Things Past] (vol. I, Swann’s Way) (1913) (trans. C.K. Scott Moncrieff & Terence Kilmartin)

(Source: books.google.com, via crystilogic)