Quotes from Marcel Proust

For the possession of what we love is an even greater joy than love itself.

The laborious process of causation which sooner or later will bring about every possible effect, including, consequently, those which one believed to be least possible, naturally slow at times, is rendered slower still by our desire (which in seeking to accelerate only obstructs it), by our very existence, and comes to fruition only when we have ceased to desire, and sometimes ceased to live.

I spent many a charming evening talking and playing with Albertine, but none so sweet as when I was watching her sleep.

No sooner does an approaching hour become the present for us than it sheds all its charms, only to regain them, it is true, on the roads of memory, when we have left that hour far behind us, and so long as our soul is vast enough to disclose deep perspectives.

It was she whom I loved and whom I could not therefore see without that anxiety, without that desire for something more, which destroys in us, in the presence of the person we love, the sensation of loving.

The theatre of the world is stocked with fewer settings than actors, and with fewer actors than situations.

When we have passed a certain age, the soul of the child that we were and the souls of the dead from whom we sprang come and shower upon us their riches and their spells, asking to be allowed to contribute to the new emotions which we feel and in which, erasing their former image, we recast them in an original creation.

We may talk for a lifetime without doing more than indefinitely repeat the vacuity of a minute.

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking out new landscapes but in having new eyes.

We are not provided with wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can take for us, an effort which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world.

In most women's lives, everything, even the greatest sorrow, comes down to a question of 'I haven't got a thing to wear'.

Memory, instead of being a duplicate, always present before one's eyes, of the various events of one's life, is rather a void from which at odd moments a chance resemblance enables ones to resuscitate dead recollections, but even then, there are innumerable little details which have not fallen into that potential reservoir of memory, and which will remain for ever unverifiable.

Sunrise is a necessary concomitant of long railway journeys, like hard-boiled eggs, illustrated papers, packs of cards, rivers upon which boats strain but make no progress.

I was genuinely in love with Mme. de Guermantes. The greatest happiness that I could have asked of God would have been that He should overwhelm her under every imaginable calamity, and that ruined, despised, stripped of all the privileges that divided her from me, having no longer any home of her own or people who would condescend to speak to her, she should come to me for refuge. I imagined her doing so.

Sadists of Mlle Vinteuil's sort are creatures so purely sentimental, so naturally virtuous, that even sensual pleasure appears to them as something bad, the prerogative of the wicked. And when they allow themselves for a moment to enjoy it they endeavour to impersonate, to identify with, the wicked, and to make their partners do likewise, in order to gain the momentary illusion of having escaped beyond the control of their own gentle and scrupulous natures into the inhuman world of pleasure.

Ma quando di un lontano passato non rimane più nulla, dopo la morte delle creature, dopo la distruzione delle cose, soli e più fragili ma più vivaci, più immateriali, più persistenti, più fedeli, l'odore e il sapore permangono ancora a lungo, come anime, a ricordare, ad attendere, a sperare, sulla rovina di tutto, a sorreggere senza tremare - loro, goccioline quasi impalpabili - l'immenso edificio del ricordo.

Nine tenths of the ills from which intelligent people suffer spring from their intellect. They need at least a doctor who understands the disease. How can you expect Cottard to be able to treat you? He has made allowances for the difficulty of digesting sauces, for gastric trouble, but he has made no allowance for the effect of reading Shakespeare.

Happiness is good for the body, but it is grief which develops the strengths of the mind.

With intelligent people, three-quarters of the things they suffer from come from their intelligence.

A w ko?cu, je?li chwile wytchnienia lub dystrakcji towarzyskich oka?? mi si? konieczne, czu?em, ?e bardziej od rozmów intelektualnych, które ludzie ?wiatowi uwa?aj? za po?yteczne dla pisarza, mi?ostki z zakwitaj?cymi dziewcz?tami b?d? moim pokarmem wybranym, któremu ostatecznie dam przyst?p do mojej wyobra?ni, przypominaj?cej owego s?ynnego konia karmionego tylko ró?ami.

from the moment when they were in love, it was superfluous to obey them, since they would only be more in love later on.

Las lluvias de noviembre habrán corrompido las flores de mi tumba, las habrá quemado junio y mi alma seguirá llorando siempre de impaciencia.

A well-read man will yawn with boredom when one speaks to him of a new "good book," as he imagines a sort of composite of all the good books he has read, whereas a good book is something special, unforeseeable, made up not of the sum of all previous masterpieces but of something which the most thorough assimilation of every one of them would not enable him to discover, since it exists not in their sum but beyond it.

Mme. de Gallardon, who could never stop herself from sacrificing her greatest social ambitions and highest hopes of someday dazzling the world to the immediate, obscure, and private pleasure of saying something disagreeable.