Quotes from Marcel Proust

under her coat, which she opened or buttoned up according as the exercise made her feel warm, the dog-toothed border of her blouse

Le désir fleurit, la possession flétrit toutes choses

he never dared to allow this smile a definite expression on his features,

For old age makes us incapable of performing our duties but not, at first, of desiring them.

Only imagination and belief can differentiate from the rest certain objects, certain people, and create an atmosphere.

The question isn't, as for Hamlet, to be or not to be, but to be one of them or not to be one of them. You're one, my uncle Charlus is one. What d'you expect? I've never liked all that, it's not my fault.

age, when we add to the pan that holds our suffering a physical pain which we have acquired and have let grow, then, instead of the courageous solution that would have carried the day at one-and-twenty, it is the other, grown too heavy and insufficiently balanced, that crushes us down at fifty.

But great talent, even when its existence is not yet recognised, will inevitably provoke certain phenomena of admiration, such as the landlord had managed to detect in the questions asked by more than one English lady visitor, athirst for information as to the life led by Elstir, or in the number of letters that he received from abroad.

The need for dreams, the desire to be made happy by the woman one has dreamed of, means that it can take no time at all to settle all one's chances of happiness on someone who a few days earlier was no more than a fortuitous, unknown, commonplace apparition on the boards of a theater.

I like a man to do something with his ten fingers. I do not like the useless creatures who are always self-important or agitators. A fatuous breed!

Every night perhaps, we accept the risk of experiencing, while we sleep, sufferings that we consider to be null and void because they will be endured only in the course of a sleep that we believe is without consciousness. In fact, on the evenings when I returned home late from La Raspelière, I was very sleepy. But as soon as the cold weather arrived, I was unable to get to sleep right away, because the fire was so bright it was as if a lamp had been lit.

Ma seule consolation, quand je montais me coucher, était que maman viendrait m'embrasser quand je serais dans mon lit. Mais ce bonsoir durait si peu de temps, elle redescendait si vite, que le moment où je l'entendais monter, puis où passait dans le couloir à double porte le bruit léger de sa robe de jardin en mousseline bleue, à laquelle pendaient de petits cordons de paille tressée, était pour moi un moment douloureux.

You have not, perhaps, any personal merit; so few of us have! But for a time at least you have youth, and that is always a charm. Besides, sir, the greatest folly of all is to laugh at or to condemn in others what one does not happen oneself to feel. I love the night, and you tell me that you are afraid of it.

Gerçek bir insan, kendisiyle ne kadar derin bir yak?nl?k kursak da, büyük ölçüde duyular?m?z taraf?ndan alg?lan?r, yani saydam de?ildir... Romanc?n?n bulu?u, ruhun nüfuz edemedi?i bölümlerin yerine e?it miktarda manevi, yani ruhumuzun özümleyebilece?i unsur koymakt?.

the renunciation that they promised cost her less; because, moreover, in a scene of parting, it is the person who is not genuinely in love that makes the tender speeches, since love does not express itself directly

It is the same in life; the heart changes, and that is our worst misfortune; but we learn of it only from reading or by imagination; for in reality its alteration, like that of certain natural phenomena, is so gradual that, even if we are able to distinguish, successively, each of its different states, we are still spared the actual sensation of change.

But really Legrandin had no need to remind people so often that he belonged to another planet when all his uncontrollable impulses of anger or affability were governed by the desire to occupy a good position on this one.

Without being ready to fix a date, I longed to put an end to this existence which I blamed for making me renounce not so much work as pleasure. It would happen also, however, that the habits which bound me were suddenly abolished, generally when some former self, full of the desire to live a merry life, took the place of what was my self at the moment.

May you learn something from this present instance. Remember it well. Affection is always precious. What we cannot do alone in life, because there are things we cannot ask, or do, or wish, or learn by ourselves, we can do together, without there needing to be thirteen of us, as in the Balzac novel,107 or four, as in The Three Musketeers. I bid you farewell." He

Yes, I have been forced to whittle down the facts, and to be a liar, but it is not one universe, but millions, almost as many as the number of human eyes and brains in existence, that awake every morning.

All the more because situations, while repeating them

ceux qui apprennent sur la vie d'un autre quelque détail exact en tirent aussitôt des conséquences qui ne le sont pas et voient dans le fait nouvellement découvert l'explication de choses qui précisément n'ont aucun rapport avec lui.

The most gifted people that I had known had died young.

that men can be being sincere with their friends, and even with themselves, when they speak warmly of a woman's kindness to them, even though, to tell the truth, their relationship is undermined secretly, in a way they do not confess to others or which is revealed involuntarily in response to questions, to inquiries, by a painful anxiety.