Quotes from Marcel Proust

had begun, one fine day, to regard him as stupid and absurd because the friends that she had among the younger writers and actors had assured her that he was, and she duly repeated what they had said with that passion, that lack of reserve which we show whenever we receive from without, and adopt as our own, opinions or customs of which we previously knew nothing.

This water lily was the same, and it was also like one of those miserable creatures whose singular torment, repeated indefinitely throughout eternity, aroused the curiosity of Dante, who would have asked the tormented creature himself to recount its cause and its particularities at greater length had Virgil, striding on ahead, not forced him to hurry after immediately, as my parents did me.

The fact is that they probably regarded aesthetic merits as material objects which an open eye could not help perceiving, without one's needing to ripen equivalents of them slowly in one's own heart.

Les pays que nous désirons tiennent à chaque moment beaucoup plus de place dans notre vie véritable, que le pays où nous nous trouvons effectivement.

The generals responsible for the death of most soldiers insist upon their being well fed.

could hear the tick of Saint-Loup's watch, which must have been somewhere near at hand. The tick changed place all the time, for I could not see the watch; it seemed to be coming from behind me, from in front, from my right, from my left, sometimes to die away as though it were coming from a long way off. Suddenly I caught sight of the watch on a table. So now I heard the tick in a fixed place, from which it did not move again.

May you always see a blue sky overhead, my young friend; and then, even when the time comes, which is coming now for me, when the woods are all black, when night is fast falling, you will be able to console yourself, as I am doing, by looking up to the sky.

un val neobi?nuit de oameni ie?i?i la plimbare umplea înc? str?zile din Combray, înnegrindu-le parc?. ?i în fa?a fiec?rei case… servitorii sau chiar st?pînii, a?eza?i ?i privind, tiveau parc? pragurile cu o broderie capricioas? ?i întunecat? ca aceea pe care o deseneaz? algele ?i scoicile zvîrlite pe malul m?rii de un flux puternic.

As a rule it is with our being reduced to a minimum that we live, most of our faculties lie dormant because they can rely upon Habit, which knows what there is to be done and has no need of their services.

Erect, isolated, having at her side her husband and myself, the Duchesse stood on the left of the staircase, already wrapped in her Tiepolo cloak, the collar fastened by the clasp of rubies, being devoured by the eyes of women and of men seeking to chance upon the secret of her elegance and her beauty.

But I had long since ceased trying to extract from a woman the square root of her unknown, as it were, which did not often survive a simple introduction.

It must be admitted that the results of this method of interpreting the art of making presents were not always happy. The idea which I formed of Venice, from a drawing by Titian which is supposed to have the lagoon in the background, was certainly far less accurate than what I have since derived from ordinary photographs.

Much that for us is fraught with with happiness or misery, remains almost unnoticed by the rest of the world.

I had been mistaken in thinking that I could see clearly into my own heart.

You will find the Comte de Crisenoy," whom I had never lost, for the simple reason that I did not know him.

De sorte que é um erro falar em má escolha de amor, pois, desde que há escolha, só pode ser má.

You hadn't heard 'Teaser Augustus'?" the Princesse d'Épinay would ask. "But of course," the Marquise de Bavano would reply with a blush, "the Princesse de Sarsina-La Rochefoucauld told me about it, but not in quite the same terms. But it must have been so much more interesting to hear it repeated like that in the company of my cousin," she added, as though she had been speaking of a song accompanied by the composer himself.

Ideas are goddesses who deign at times to make themselves visible to a solitary mortal, at a turning in the road, even in his bedroom while he sleeps, when they, standing framed in the doorway, bring him the annunciation of their tidings.

Os lugares que conhecemos não pertencem tampouco ao mundo do espaço, onde os situamos para maior facilidade. Não eram mais que uma delgada fatia no meio de impressões contíguas que formavam a nossa vida de então; a recordação de certa imagem não é senão saudade de certo instante; as casas, os caminhos, as avenidas são fugitivos, infelizmente, como os anos.

But because I knew this to be impossible in a letter addressed to me, the sight of it unaccompanied by any belief in it gave me no pleasure.

Until now, I had reckoned only that I had not the 'gift' for writing; now M. de Norpois took from me the ambition also.

but beneath the words and thoughts of an ungrateful, selfish, and cruel young man there had never been anything that might resemble my grandmother, for, in my frivolity, my love of pleasure, and accustomed as I was to seeing her as an invalid, I contained within me the memory of what she had been only in a virtual state.

Obviously, we prefer to be praised rather than insulted and still more when a woman we love deceives us, what would we not give that it should be otherwise. But the resentment of the affront, the pain of the abandonment would in that event have been worlds we should never have known, the discovery of which, painful as it may be for the man, is precious for the artist. In spite of himself and of themselves, the mischievous and the ungrateful must figure in his work.

since one has doubts of them at the moment when one believes in them, and never can possess their hearts as I used to receive, in her kiss, the heart of my mother, complete, without scruple or reservation, unburdened by any liability save to myself)