Proust Questionnaire: Henry

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On Wed, 03 Feb 16 21:34:39 UTC Henry_Z (25) answered the Proust Questionnaire (click on a question to read other answers):

What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?: To be irredeemably mediocre
Where would you like to live?: Paris
What is your idea of earthly happiness?: In imperturbable comfort and satisfaction of the mind, body, and spirit
To what faults do you feel most indulgent?: To live an unamused and unexamined life
Who are your favorite heroes of fiction?: Those who fail amidst seeking apotheosis (e.g. Lucifer of Paradise Lost)
Who are your favorite characters in history?: Those who fight and succeed in altering the inexorable tide of history (e.g. Napoleon)
Who are your favorite heroines in real life?: A woman who fights for her place as a man would
Who are your favorite heroines of fiction?: A woman who dares to believe in a world that can't allow it
Your favorite painter?: Rembrandt
Your favorite musician?: Bach
The quality you most admire in a man?: Humble competence
The quality you most admire in a woman?: Humble competence
Your favorite virtue?: Insatiable curiosity regarding the human condition
Your favorite occupation?: Exposing myself to unfamiliar ideas
Who would you have liked to be?: Lord Byron
Your most marked characteristic?: Worldliness and erudition in the exalted and mundane
What do you most value in your friends?: Honest empathy and a willingness to intelligently challenge me
What is your principle defect?: Existential dread at being mediocre and paralysis in the face of challenges
What to your mind would be the greatest of misfortunes?: To meekly accept mediocrity and enjoy it
What would you like to be?: Loved, admired, successful, happy
What is your favorite color?: Green
What is your favorite flower?: An orchid or a lily
What is your favorite bird?: The raven
Who are your favorite prose writers?: Leo Tolstoy, Herman Melville
Who are your favorite poets?: Emily Dickinson, W.B. Yeats
Who are your heroes in real life?: I seek inspiration from the divine, and thus sadly I have yet to know a living hero
Who are your favorite heroines of history?: Joan of Arc
What are your favorite names?: Those of Roman patricians that you only find on prep school prigs nowadays
What is it you most dislike?: Ugliness, both physical and spiritual
What historical figures do you most despise?: Those that do not seize the horns of their power and accede to the demands of the masses (e.g. Sardanapalus)
What event in military history do you most admire?: Napoleon's victory at Austerlitz
What natural gift would you most like to possess?: Beauty and talent - everything else I can learn
How would you like to die?: Knowing that I could not have juiced more from the fruit of life
What is your present state of mind?: Fear and disgust at becoming what I think as the worst kind of person
What is your motto?: And the Zen master said, "We'll see."

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