Quotes from Marcel Proust

With any one member of my little gang of girls, was I not bound to recall only the most recently glimpsed of her possible faces, given that the mind eliminates from our memories of anyone whatever does not contribute in an immediately useful way to our daily dealings with the person, even if—especially if!—these dealings are colored by a tincture of love, which, by being perpetually unsatisfied, lives forever in the coming moment?

That feeling of veneration which we always have for those who hold, and exercise without restraint, the power to do us harm.

De schoonzus van een van mijn vriendinnen heeft onlangs telefoon in haar huis laten aanleggen! [...] Ik zal je eerlijk bekennen dat ik listen en lagen verzonnen heb om ook eens een keer door het toestel te mogen komen spreken. Ik vind het heel aantrekkelijk, maar toch meer bij een vriendin dan bij mij thuis. Daar zou ik geloof ik niet graag een telefoon willen hebben. Als het eerste nieuwtje eraf is, wordt dat gebel waarschijnlijk een plaag.

O olhar de Robert, com efeito, parecia por momentos atingir uma profundidade que abandonava em seguida, como um mergulhador que tocou o fundo. Esse fundo, que tanto mal fazia a Robert quando o tocava que ele o deixava imediatamente para voltar um instante depois, era a lembrança de que havia rompido com a sua amante.

And the more completely our desires have been realized and the longer the happiness has been prolonged, against the laws of nature, and has been consecrated by habit, the stronger the sorrow, the more impossible to bear. In another sense too, the two tendencies, in this case the one which made me want my letter to be sent and, when I thought that it had been, to regret this, are both true in their way.

É admirável como o ciúme, que passa o tempo a fazer pequenas suposições do que é falso, tem pouca imaginação quando se trata de descobrir o que é verdadeiro.

the lie that tries to have us believe we are not inescapably alone in the world, and which, when we converse with someone, prevents us from admitting that it is not we who are speaking, that at such times we try to take on the semblance of other people, rather than be the self that differs from them.

This is the feeling that death does not descend upon all men alike, but that a more oncoming wave of its tragic tide carries off a life placed at the same level as others which the waves that follow will long continue to spare.

For when it is in the hope of making a priceless discovery that we desire to receive certain impressions from nature or from works of art, we have qualms lest our soul imbibe inferior impressions which might lead us to form a false estimate of the value of Beauty.

I was awakened by the blare of a regimental band which passed every day beneath my windows. But on several occasions — and I mention these because one cannot properly describe human life unless one shews it soaked in the sleep in which it plunges, which, night after night, sweeps round it as a promontory is encircled by the sea — the intervening layer of sleep was strong enough to bear the shock of the music and I heard nothing.

People wish to learn to swim and at the same time to keep one foot on the ground.

Comme sur un plant où les fleurs mûrissent à des époques différentes, je les avais vues, en de vieilles dames, sur cette plage de Balbec, ces dures graines, ces mous tubercules, que mes amies seraient un jour. Mais qu'importait ? en ce moment c'était la saison des fleurs.

?injenice nemaju pristušpa u svijet u kojemu žive naša uvjerenja, one ta uvjerenja nisu stvorile, pa ih ne mogu ni razoriti. ?injenice mogu uvjerenjima nametnuti najpouzdanija opovrgnu?a, a da ne proizvedu ni najmanji u?inak, a kamoli da ih oslabe.

Every being we love, up to a point every being, is a Janus, showing us its pleasant face as it moves away from us, and its gloomy face if we know it is permanently available to us.

Albertine would in any case either not have given me any answer or else a "no" in which the "n" would have been too hesitant and the "o" too resonant. Albertine never recounted facts that might harm her,

Tuo metu aš buvau ?simyl?j?s teatr?, žinoma, platoniška meile, nes t?vai dar niekad nebuvo leid? man tenai nueiti, ir tok? menk? tetur?jau supratim?, kas tai per malonumas, kad bemaž tik?jau, jog teatre kiekvienas ži?ri tartum pro stereoskop? ? dekoracijas, rodomas jam vienam, nors ir visai panašias ? t?kstan?ius kit?, kurias mato visi ži?rovai, tiktai kiekvienas atskirai.

to suppose that it formed part of a vast and enduring happiness that had appeared to me at this point alone; and, so that the following day might not give the lie to this pretense, not to try to demand a further favor following that which had been due only to the artifice of an exceptional moment.

that healing attack of mental alienation which is sleep

I had already drunk a good deal of port wine, and if I now asked for more it was not so much with a view to the comfort which the additional glasses would bring me as an effect of the comfort produced by the glasses that had gone before.

while the scene-changing is going on behind it, actors present a divertissement.

But, just as we are devoid of that sense of direction with which certain birds are endowed, so we lack the sense of visibility as we lack that of distances, imagining as close the concerned attention of people who, on the contrary, never give us a thought, and not suspecting that during this same time we are the sole preoccupation of others.

It is necessary to adapt oneself to the enemy's latest formula so as to defend oneself against him; then he starts a fresh innovation and yet, as in other human things, the old tricks always come off.

For theories and schools, like microbes and corpuscles, devour one another and by their warfare ensure the continuity of existence.

Não advertia que aquele detalhe verdadeiro tinha ângulos que só podiam encaixar-se nos detalhes contíguos do fato verdadeiro de que imprudentemente o destacara e que, quaisquer que fossem os detalhes inventados entre os quais o colocasse, sempre revelariam, pela matéria excedente e os vazios não preenchidos, que não era ali o seu lugar.