"For even if we have the sensation of being always enveloped in, surrounded by our own soul, still it does not seem a fixed and immovable prison; rather do we seem to be borne away with it, and perpetually struggling to transcend it, to break out into the world, with a perpetual discouragement as we hear endlessly all around us that unvarying sound which is not an echo from without, but the resonance of a vibration from within. We try to discover in things, which become precious to us on that account , the reflection of what our soul has projected on to them; we are disillusioned when we find that they are in reality devoid of the charm which they owned, in our minds, to the association of certain things; sometimes we mobilise all our spiritual forces in a glittering array in order to bring our influence to bear on other human beings who, we never reach them."
Marcel Proust: Rememberance of Things Past