Proust in his first book wrote about

Apparently, personality surveys have been a fixture in western social circles for longer than I thought. I'd stumbled across one in Eric Fromm's Marx's Concept of Man, but I'd pegged that as a one-off. I'd thought they'd blossomed with the birth of online journals, myspace and the like. Not so, as this webpage illustrates. I've decided to take a crack at the Proust questionnaires.

• What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
  Failure. More accurately, the crippling fear of failure.
  
• Where would you like to live?
  The Midwest. A city.
  
• What is your idea of earthly happiness?
  Surrounded by books, free to read and think and the like.
  
• To what faults do you feel most indulgent?
  Indecision.
  
• Who are your favorite heroes of fiction?
  Daniel Waterhouse, Odysseus, John Proctor, Creon.
  
• Who are your favorite characters in history?
  Cicero, Cromwell, Lincoln, Grant, FDR.
  
• Who are your favorite heroines in real life?
  Barbara Jordan, Rachel Maddow
  
• Who are your favorite heroines of fiction?
  Antigone, Cassandra, the Furies.
  
• Your favorite painter?
  Hopper
  
• Your favorite musician?
  I'll answer the classical one. Fuare
  
• The quality you most admire in a man?
  Loyalty
  
• The quality you most admire in a woman?
  Loyalty
  
• Your favorite virtue?
  Pietas
  
• Your favorite occupation?
  Reading.
  
• Who would you have liked to be?
  Charles Stuart's lawyer - John Cooke
  

That was asked to Proust at 13. This was given to Proust at 20.

• Your most marked characteristic?
  Pragmatism
  
• The quality you most like in a man?
  Quality again? Loyalty.
  
• The quality you most like in a woman?
  
  Proust's answer was too good; "frankness in friendship."
• What do you most value in your friends?
  Their honesty
  
• What is your principle defect?
  Arrogance coupled with fear.
  
• What is your favorite occupation?
  Anything involving an alcoholic drink and a stack of books.
  
• What is your dream of happiness?
  To love and to be loved.
  
• What to your mind would be the greatest of misfortunes?
  To have been raised by different parents.
  
• What would you like to be?
  Smarter and less fearful
  
• In what country would you like to live?
  A Midwest that's proud of itself.
  
• What is your favorite color?
  Blue
  
• What is your favorite flower?
  The peony. (Proust's answers for this and the above were unbearably fin de siecle).
  
• What is your favorite bird?
  The Corbie.
  
• Who are your favorite prose writers?
  George Orwell, W.E.B. Dubois and Neal Stephenson.
  
• Who are your favoite poets?
  Hugh MacDiarmid, John Donne, Petrarch.
  
• Who is your favorite hero of fiction?
  MacBeth, Odysseus, Daniel Waterhouse (I didn't look at my other answer for this)
  
• Who are your favorite heroines of fiction?
  Antigone, Cassandra.
  
• Who are your favorite composers?
  Fuare, Wagner, Britten, Hayden
  
• Who are your favorite painters?
  Hopper, Holbien.
  
• Who are your heroes in real life?
  The Longhenries.
  
• Who are your favorite heroines of history?
  Elenore Roosevelt, Admiral Hopper, Rachel Maddow
• What is it you most dislike?
  Preying on fear
  
• What historical figures do you most despise?
  The Stuart Kings, Jefferson Davis, the Demagogues of the 30's-40's
  
• What event in military history do you most admire?
  The Anglo-Irish War (how to fight an insurgency) and the Malayan Emergency (how to defeat one)
  
• What reform do you most admire?
  The 1965 Civil Rights Act
  
• What natural gift would you most like to possess?
  Optimism.
  
• How would you like to die?
  Old age, extremely advanced. Or hypothermia.
  
• What is your present state of mind?
  Sickness. An irritation at being pretentious enough to do this survey.
  
• To what faults do you feel most indulgent?
  Indecision.
  
• What is your motto?
  
  Dum Spiro, Spero.