Quotes from Marcel Proust

This reaction from the disappointment which great works of art cause at first may in fact be attributed to a weakening of the initial impression or to the effort necessary to lay bare the truth—two hypotheses which recur in all important questions, questions about the truth of Art, of Reality, of the Immortality of the Soul; we must choose between them;

So that we always see as young those we knew young and those whom we knew as old people we embellish retrospectively with the virtues of old age,

They knew the address. They went to the house. They did not see its mistress. But at dinner that evening she would say: "I hear they've

Other people as a rule mean so little to us that, when we have invested one of them with the power to cause us so much suffering or happiness, that person seems at once to belong to a different universe, is surrounded with poetry, makes of one's life a sort of stirring arena in which he or she will be more or less close to one.

But the imagination goes beyond the reality in supposition.

Con le donne che non ci amano, come con i "dispersi", sapere di non avere più nulla da sperare non ci impedisce di continuare ad attendere.

But it seems to me that in these days there is a tendency to mix up the genres and forget that the novelist's business is rather to weave a plot and edify his readers than to fiddle away at producing a frontispiece or tailpiece in drypoint.

On ne guérit d'une souffrance qu'à condition de l'éprouver pleinement.

Love? I make it often, but I never talk about it.

Lo primero y lo más íntimo que yo sentía,..., que gobernaba todo lo demás, era mi creencia en la riqueza filosófica y la belleza del libro que estaba leyendo y mi deseo de apropiármelas, de cualquier libro que se tratara

In bodily suffering, at least we do not have ourselves to choose our pain. The malady decides it and imposes it on us. But in jealousy we have to some extent to make trial of sufferings of every sort and degree, before we arrive at the one which seems appropriate.

Es ist unglaublich zu denken, dass jemand nicht begreifen kann, dass er sich, wenn er sich dazu herabwürdigt, über einen Mitmenschen zu lächeln, dem er eben noch die Hand gedrückt hat, in eine Gosse begibt, aus dem er sich beim besten Willen nicht wieder herausarbeiten kann.

Let's hope that when we are dead things will be better arranged.

There is nothing like desire for preventing the thing one says from bearing any resemblance to what one has in one's mind.

One would be cured for ever of romanticism if one could make up one's mind, in thinking of the woman one loves, to try to be the man one will be when one no longer loves her.

But, for one thing, however fiercely the Dreyfus cyclone was raging, it is not at the onset of a storm that the waves are at their most violent.

if, when Odette wished to go for a walk, in the morning, along the Avenue du Bois-de-Boulogne, his duty as a good husband had obliged him, though he had no desire to go out, to accompany her, carrying her cloak when she was too warm; and in the evening, after dinner, if she wished to stay at home, and not to dress, if he had been forced to stay beside her, to do what she asked;

Umutsuzlu?a kap?lmak için, art?k ancak bedbaht olabilecek bu hayata ba?l? olmam?z gerekir.

Always remember that, when all's said and done, what does most to accelerate the evolution of the art of war is wars themselves. In

Ah! It's fortunate for you that those who bred you brought you into the world to rank and riches; what would ever have become of you, so wasteful as you are. Look at him throwing away his crescent because it touched the bed. There he goes, now, look, he's spilling his milk, wait till I tie a napkin round you, for you could never do it for yourself, never in my life have I seen anyone so helpless and so clumsy as you.

every time that she indulged in it, pleasure came to her attended by evil thoughts such as, ordinarily, had no place in her virtuous mind, she came at length to see in pleasure itself something diabolical, to identify it with Evil.

Albeit expression suffices to make us believe in enormous differences between things that are separated by infinitely little — albeit that infinitely little may by itself create an expression that is absolutely unique, an individuality — it was not only the infinitely little of its lines and the originality of its expression that made each of these faces appear irreducible to terms of any other.

Ponchour, Matame la marquise » avec le même accent qu'un concierge alsacien.

For a long time, I went to bed early.