Quotes from Marcel Proust

had placed myself on the wrong side of her, she pivoted round me so skillfully that I found her arm resting on my own and fell quite naturally into her rhythm of precise and noble deportment. I yielded to this all the more readily because the Guermantes attached no more importance to it than a truly learned man does to his learning, with the result that one is less intimidated in his company than in that of an ignoramus;

But friendship does not express itself in the same way in different people.

Swann immediately recognized this statement as one of those fragments of true fact with which liars, when caught unprepared, console themselves by introducing into the composition of the falsehood they are inventing,

began to wonder whether originality really shows that great writers are gods, each of them reigning over a kingdom which is his alone, whether misleading appearances might not play a role in this, and whether the differences between their books might not be the result of hard work, rather than the expression of a radical difference in essence between distinct personalities.

That art had become a poor and pitiable thing. It was no longer inhabited by a deep-rooted soul.

Il y a des jours montueux et malaisés qu'on met un temps infini à gravir et des jours en pente qui se laissent descendre à fond de train en chantant.

le regardait avec un respect attendri, mais pas trop fixement pour ne pas chercher à percer le mystère de ses supériorités.

Chartres Cathedral' after Corot, of the 'Fountains of Saint-Cloud' after Hubert Robert, and of 'Vesuvius' after Turner,

in that blinding light of the beach by which social distinctions are altered,

the superficial charm, the servile chatter that makes a favorable impression on a visitor, but that often cloaks an ineducable incompetence.

The facts of life do not penetrate to the sphere in which our beliefs are cherished; as it was not they that engendered those beliefs, so they are powerless to destroy them; they can aim at them continual blows of contradiction and disproof without weakening them;

for want of feeling or immorality, once confessed, simplify life as effectively as loose morals: they remove the need to find excuses for blameworthy actions, and transform them into obligations of sincerity

could still believe in their possible presence; for memory was now set in motion;

A stranger leaves us indifferent, and indifference does not prompt us to unkind actions.

The fact was, I had just heard her laugh. And her laugh at once suggested the rosy flesh, the fragrant portals between which it had just made its way, seeming also, as strong, sensual and revealing as the scent of geraniums, to carry with it some microscopic particles of their substance, irritant and secret.

But we learn nothing from any lesson because we have not the wisdom to work backwards from the particular to the general, and imagine ourselves always to be going through an experience which is without precedents in the past

No doubt these geographical regions and the historic past that injected forest glades and Gothic steeples into their names had to a certain extent shaped their faces, their minds, and their prejudices, but had survived in them only as does the cause in the effect—that is, as something that can be unearthed by the intelligence but in no way perceived by the imagination.

in my spell of uncertainty as to where I was...

Snobbery is a grave disease, but it is localised and so does not utterly corrupt the soul.

happy that the satisfaction of his curiosity had left their love intact and that after having simulated a sort of indifference toward Odette for so long, he had not given her, by his jealousy, that proof of loving her too much which, between two lovers, exempts forever after, from loving enough, the one who receives

Ressaisir notre vie ; et aussi la vie des autres ; car le style, pour l'écrivain aussi bien que pour le peintre, est une question non de technique, mais de vision. Il est la révélation, qui serait impossible par des moyens directs et conscients, de la différence qualitative qu'il y a dans la façon dont nous apparaît le monde, différence qui, s'il n'y avait pas l'art, resterait le secret éternel de chacun.

seemed to proclaim the unpeopled vacancy of this estranged forest, and helped me to understand how paradoxical it is to seek in reality for the pictures that are stored in one's memory, which must inevitably lose the charm that comes to them from memory itself and from their not being apprehended by the senses. The reality that I had known no longer existed.

Em suma, minha tia exigia, ao mesmo tempo em que a aprovassem em seu regime, que a lamentassem por seus padecimentos e que a tranquilizassem quanto ao futuro.

I would feel the satisfaction of being shut in from the outer world...