My Year With Proust - Day 88

"' . . . For a month and more Vaugoubert's enemies danced around him howling for his scalp' (M. de Norpois detached this word with sharp emphasis). 'But forewarned is forearmed; he treat their insults with the contempt they deserved,' he added even more forcibly, and with so fierce a glare in his eye that for a moment we forgot our food. 'In the words of a fine Arab proverb, "The dogs may bark; the caravan moves on!"' . . . 'Give me a good policy and I will give you good finances, to quote the favourite words of Baron Louis': for we had not yet imported from the Far East: 'Victory is on the side that can hold out a quarter of an hour longer than the other, as the Japanese say.'"

Marcel Proust, Within a Budding Grove, pp. 497-498

Here Proust is recounting M. de Norpois holding forth, and specifically his habit of emphasizing his points with famous or obscure quotes.  I tagged this passage for a couple reasons.  First off, the quotes "The dogs may bark; the caravan moves one!" and "Victory is on the side that can hold out a quarter of an hour longer than the other" are two of my favorites.  I was prepared to make the former the official quote/remonstrance of the Zanzibar trip, but never had to do so because the students were so well-behaved and enthusiastic.  The second reason why I pulled out that section is that it reflects my own conflicted reaction to people who pull out quotes like this to prove a point.  In some ways it annoys me, especially if the person making use of the quote quite clearly opened up Bartlett's Familiar Quotations and randomly pulled out something.  Commencement speakers - and college presidents - do this all the time.  In the end it just makes you look stupid, especially when you're trying to pull off this bait and switch in front of an educated audience.  I always tell my students that they should only use quotes that they legitimately came across in their actual readings.  Essentially, if you're going to quote Proust then it better have been from that time you read Remembrance of Things Past.  Over the years I've made more than a few students cry over this issue, but in the end I think it's good for them.  The other side of my conflicted view of the use of quotes is an obvious one - I do it all the time (albeit while keeping within the rule explained above).  Yes, it's one of my great weaknesses, and I know it says something bad about my character.  And, yes, the more obscure the quote the better.