Quotes from Marcel Proust

his imagination and did not feed his jealousy. Swann's mind would become exhausted, until, passing his hand over his eyes, he would exclaim: "We must trust in God," like those who, after having persisted in embracing the problem of the reality of the external world or the immortality of the soul, grant their tired brains the relief of an act of faith.

When one feels oneself smitten by love for a woman, one ought to say to oneself, 'What are 'her surroundings? What has been her life?' All one's future happiness lies in the answer.

For me high society is only a means to an end. It offers vulgar but invincible weapons, and if I want to be loved someday, I have to possess them.

Là comme partout, je connais tout le monde et je ne connais personne; beaucoup les choses et fort peu les personnes. Mais les choses elles-mêmes y semblent des personnes, des personnes rares, d'une essence délicate et que la vie aurait déçue.

La vraie vie, [...] c'est la littérature.

The sight of Albertine's bare throat, of those too rosy cheeks, had so intoxicated me (that is to say had placed the reality of the world for me no longer in nature, but in the torrent of sensations that I could barely contain) that this sight had destroyed the equilibrium between the immense and indestructible life that circulated in my being and the life of the universe, so puny in comparison.

I thought of you, of our walks you made so delightful, while tremendous fights were going on for the capture of a hillock you loved and where so often we had been together. Probably you, like myself, are unable to imagine that obscure Roussainville and tiresome Méséglise, whence our letters were brought and where one went to fetch the doctor when you were ill, are now celebrated places

je m'en croyais la possession entièrement assurée, que j'avais négligé d'en calculer la valeur, ce qui faisait qu'il me paraissait forcément inférieur à des plaisirs, si petits qu'ils fussent, mais que, cherchant à les imaginer, j'évaluais.

Assim vai mudando o nosso coração, durante a vida, e esta é a pior das dores; porém só a conhecemos através da leitura, pela imaginação: na realidade o coração se trasnforma da mesma maneiracomo se produzem certos fenômenos da natureza, tão vagarosamente que, embora possamos verificar de modo sucessivo seus estados diferentes, em compensação nos foge a própria sensação de mudança.

A vicious person, always affecting the same air of virtue before people whom he is anxious to keep from having any suspicion of his vices, has no register, no gauge at hand from which he may ascertain how far those vices (their continuous growth being imperceptible by himself) have gradually segregated him from the normal ways of life

a bee drugged with tobacco smoke that had ceased to take any thought for preserving the accumulation of its labours and the hopes of its hive.

Distances are only the relation of space to time and vary with that relation.

Ni siquiera desde el punto de vista de las cosas más insignificantes de la vida somos los hombres un todo materialmente constituido, idéntico para todos, y del que cualquiera puede enterarse como de un pliego de condiciones o de un testamento. Nuestra personalidad social es una creación del pensamiento de los demás.

The similarity between the evanescent greetings of the Duchesse de Lambresac and those of my grandmother's friends had begun to interest me, by demonstrating that in narrow and enclosed social circles, whether among the petty bourgeoisie or the high nobility, the old ways persist, enabling us to rediscover, like an archaeologist, how people may have been brought up, and the element of soul that it reflects, in the days of the Vicomte d'Arlincourt and Loïsa Puget.

there comes in all lives a time, towards which you still have far to go, when the weary eyes can endure but one kind of light, the light which a fine evening like this prepares for us in the stillroom of darkness, when the ears can listen to no music save what the moonlight breathes through the flute of silence.

opted in favour of simplicity, the arts, and magnanimity

in spite of having witnessed the birth of the telephone they decline to believe in the aeroplane.

In order to deploy the means necessary to ensure her return, I was condemned to act once more as if I were not in love with her and were not suffering from her departure, I was condemned to continue lying to her—not that I had ever been very successful with this course of action, but because I had always adopted it since I had been in love with Albertine.

In actual fact, I had not imagined there to have been anything sensual, or even sentimental, in the Baron's offers. I had said that to my parents out of sheer foolishness. But the future sometimes dwells in us without our knowing it, and the words thought to be untruthful describe an imminent reality.

Monsieur, there are people who keep nothing of their life for themselves, not one minute, not one pleasure, the whole thing is a sacrifice for others, they are lives that are given away.

a constant repetition and a boundless incongruity of useless but indestructible objects.

Distances are only the relation of space to time and vary with that relation. We express the difficulty that we have in getting to a place in a system of miles or kilometres which becomes false as soon as that difficulty decreases.

For just as it is not the desire to become famous but the habit of being laborious that enables us to produce a finished work, so it is not the activity of the present moment but wise reflexions from the past that help us to safeguard the future.

But the intensity of her mimicry could not fill the place of that light which is absent from our eyes so long as we do not understand what people are talking to us about.