Quotes from Marcel Proust

In love, it often happens that gratitude, the desire to give pleasure, causes us to be generous beyond the limits of what hope and self-interest had envisaged. But then the implementation of this offer would become hindered by further complications

Really, I find all that sort of thing too deadly. Listen, it's not always as boring as this at my parties. I hope that you will soon come and dine again as a compensation, with no pedigrees next time," she murmured, incapable both of appreciating the kind of charm which I could find in her house and of having sufficient humility to be content to appeal to me only as a herbarium, filled with plants of another day.

Perhaps it is only people who can make us suffer a great deal who can offer us, in our hours of remission, that same, pacifying calm that nature can give.

La vera terra dei barbari non è quella che non ha mai conosciuto l'arte, ma quella che, disseminata di capolavori, non sa né apprezzarli né conservarli.

for each of us sees clarity only in those ideas which have the same degree of confusion as his own. Besides,

His anger was like a single musical phrase to which in an opera several lines are sung which are entirely different from one another, if one studies the words, in meaning and character, but which the music assimilates by a common sentiment.

By the time one wants to remember how one began to love a woman, one is already in love; during earlier reveries, one did not say to oneself, "this is the beginning of love, I must pay attention," and the feelings crept up on us almost unnoticed.

Nas?l ki baz? yarat?klar, tabiat?n üretmekten vazgeçti?i bir canl? türünün son örnekleriyse, acaba –dil, kelimeler, dü?üncelerin çözümlenmesi icat edilmemi? olsa–ruhlar aras?nda mevcut olabilecek ileti?imin yegâne örne?i de müzik mi diye dü?ünüyordum. Müzik, devam? gelmemi? bir olas?l?k gibidir; insanl?k ba?ka yollara, konu?ma ve yaz? diline sapm??t?r.

These accounts helped my imagination, in after years, to take the line of supposing that Albertine might, instead of being a good girl, have had the same immorality, the same faculty of deception as a reformed prostitute, and I thought of all the sufferings that would in that case have been in store for me had I ever really been her lover

Live with a woman altogether and you will soon cease to see any of the things that made you love her; though I must add that these two sundered elements can be reunited by jealousy

We had better stop seeing each other, life is forcing us apart." No doubt when I was writing those words to Gilberte, I was saying to myself that when I next loved, not her but some other person, the excess of my love would diminish the love that that person might otherwise feel for me, as if between two people there were inevitably a fixed amount of love, so that where one loved more the other must love less, and from that other, as from Gilberte, I should be forced one day to separate.

to understand that the rule among humankind—which allows of exceptions, naturally—is that the hard are the weak whom no one has wanted, and that the strong alone, caring little whether they are wanted or not, have that gentleness that the crowd mistakes for weakness.

And if she had appeared, would I have dared to speak to her?

The problem with people is that for us they are no more than prints in our mental museum, which fade on exposure. And it is precisely because of this that they form the basis of projects illuminated by our thoughts, but thoughts tire and memories collapse: the day would come when I would happily give Albertine's room to the first girl who wanted it, as I had given Albertine the agate marble or other gifts of Gilberte's.

And by a strange coincidence, that reasoned fear of danger was born at the very moment when the idea of death had become indifferent to me. The fear of no longer existing had formerly horrified me at each new love I experienced—for Gilberte, for Albertine—because I could not bear the thought that one day the being who loved them might not be there; it was a sort of death. But the very recurrence of this fear led to its changing into calm confidence.

Cathedrals are to be adored until the day when, to preserve them, it would be necessary to deny the truths which they teach.

when I sensed that my life could be one of fulfillment, and should therefore have seen it as having increased in value, that I felt liberated from the anxieties it had hitherto inspired in me, and was prepared to commit it without hesitation to the unsure hands of chance.

I had been struck, as we came away, by the discovery that this young man, so generous when he was far less rich, had become so stingy.

not nearly smart enough for such a very smart man.

When one is in love one has no love left for anyone.

prizes worth winning, which they would not have seemed if they had been mere medals, however fine, rather than lockets with mementos of love hidden inside.

Il devient dangereux au contraire quand, au lieu de nous éveiller à la vie personnelle de l'esprit, la lecture tend à se substituer à elle, quand la vérité ne nous apparaît plus comme un idéal que nous ne pouvons réaliser que par le progrès intime de notre pensée et par l'effort de notre cœur...

we love only that in which we pursue something inaccessible, we love only what we do not possess,

It is as if the minds of people of action, and smart people are people of action (on a minuscule, microscopic scale, but still action), are so consumed by attention to what will be happening in an hour's time that they commit very little to memory.