Quotes from Marcel Proust

Habit! – that skilful but very slow housekeeper who begins by letting our mind suffer for weeks in a temporary arrangement; but whom we are nevertheless very happy to find, for without habit and reduced to no more than its own resources, our mind would be powerless to make a lodging habitable.

We shall perish, but we have for our hostages these divine captives who shall follow and share our fate. And death in their company is something less bitter, less inglorious, perhaps even less certain.

Oh! The story-teller! Oh! The flatterer! Oh! The false one! The cunning rogue! Oh! Molière!" (This was the only writer's name that she knew, but she applied it to me, meaning thereby a person who was capable both of writing plays and of acting them.) "Céleste!" came the imperious cry from Marie, who, not knowing the name of Molière, was afraid that it might be some fresh insult.

The chief one, or at least the one which brought others into play, was that, either because he had a worse memory than I or attached less significance to my reprisals than I to his attacks, owing to my being less important in his eyes than he in mine, he had entirely forgotten our hostility.

But, just as we do not possess that sense of direction with which certain birds are endowed, so we lack the sense of our own visibility as we lack that of distances, imagining as quite close to us the interested attention of the people who on the contrary never give us a thought, and not suspecting that we are at the same time the sole preoccupation of others.

I shall see myself that Morel is mine." This unmistakeableness in the eyes of everyone, in his own eyes, made M. de Charlus happiest of all. For the possession of what one loves is a joy greater than love itself.

the fascination of my book, a magic as potent as the deepest slumber,

The past lies hidden beyond the mind's realm and reach, in some material object (in the sensation that material object gives us). And it depends entirely on chance whether or not we encounter that object before we die.

Really, it is unheard of, this spontaneous generation of falsehood. I do not ask who it was that told you, but it would be really interesting, in a field as limited as this, to work back from one person to another and find out how the story arose

E recomecei a escutar, a sofrer; quando estamos à espera, do ouvido que recolhe os ruídos ao espírito que os despoja e analisa, e do espírito ao coração a quem ele transmite os seus resultados, tão rápido é o duplo trajeto que nem sequer lhe podemos perceber a duração, e parece estarmos escutando diretamente com o nosso coração.

nous ne connaissons jamais que les passions des autres, et que ce que nous arrivons à savoir des nôtres, ce n'est que d'eux que nous avons pu l'apprendre.

For, according to Françoise's code, as it is illustrated in the carvings of Saint-André-des-Champs, to wish for the death of an enemy, even to inflict it is not forbidden, but it is a horrible sin not to do what is expected of you, not to return a civility,

Often those who hide their possession from everyone do so only for fear that the loved object will be taken away from them. And their happiness, by this prudent choice of silence, is diminished.

and I am saying this because it is not possible to describe human life without bathing it in the sleep into which it plunges, and which, night after night, encircles it like the sea around a promontory

putting adroitly provocative questions to casual witnesses, bribing servants, listening at doors, seemed to him now to be precisely on a level with the deciphering of manuscripts, the weighing of evidence, the interpretation of old monuments—so many different methods of scientific investigation with a genuine intellectual value and legitimately employable in the search for truth.

He was right: that intonation at any rate did convey a genuine and manifest effect, and should therefore have satisfied my desire to find irrefutable reasons for admiring La Berma. But it did not satisfy it, because of its very transparency

To reach the end of a day, natures that are slightly nervous, as mine was, make use, like motor-cars, of different 'speeds.' There are mountainous, uncomfortable days, up which one takes an infinite time to pass, and days downward sloping, through which one can go at full tilt, singing as one goes.

chaque classe sociale a sa pathologie)

Comme le public ne connaît du charme, de la grâce, des formes de la nature que ce qu'il en a puisé dans les poncifs d'un art lentement assimilé, et qu'un artiste original commence par rejeter ces poncifs, M. et Mme Cottard, image en cela du public, ne trouvaient ni dans la sonate de Vinteuil, ni dans les portraits du peintre, ce qui faisait pour eux l'harmonie de la musique et la beauté de la peinture.

Ah! 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

É que toda vez que queremos imitar alguma coisa que se passou realmente, esquecemos que essa coisa foi produzida não pela vontade de imitar, mas por uma força inconsciente e, por sua vez, real.

whatever reason they give, simply don't want to be killed, it's nothing but funk." And with a more emphatic gesture than when he alluded to others, "And if I don't rejoin my regiment, it's for the same reason.

the only touchstone of merit seeming to me to be the way someone could be useful in connection with the one thing that seemed important—my love. Then, perhaps out of duplicity, or in a genuine surge of affection inspired by gratitude, by self-interest, and by all the physical features of Mme de Guermantes that nature had replicated in her nephew, I went on to add:

Stiamo tutti costretti, per renderci sopportabile la realtà, a coltivare dentro di noi qualche piccola follia.