Quotes from Marcel Proust

I learned that a death had occurred during the day which distressed me greatly, that of Bergotte.

Time serves us powerfully by adding its influence to purely intellectual affinities; it is the passage of time that causes us to forget our antipathies, our contempts, and the very causes which gave birth to them.

for it is not only by dint of lying to other people, but also by lying to oneself that one ceases to be aware that one is lying,

but whenever I thought about them I pictured them to myself either in tapestry, as was the 'Coronation of Esther' which hung in our church,

In any case, Swann was blind not only to the gaps in Odette's education, but also to her poverty of mind. Indeed, when she told one of her silly stories, he would listen to her full of an obliging, cheerful, even admiring attentiveness, which could be explained only by his finding her still sexually arousing;

Ce qui est étonnant, dit-il, c'est que ce public qui ne juge ainsi des hommes et des choses de la guerre que par les journaux est persuadé qu'il juge par lui-même. »

I saw all the male guests take up the similar carnations that were lying by their plates and slip them into the buttonholes of their coats. I did as they had done, with the air of spontaneity that a free-thinker assumes in church, who is not familiar with the order of service but rises when everyone else rises and kneels a moment after everyone else is on his knees.

That is how I see her to this day: standing there, her eyes shining under her toque, silhouetted against the backdrop of the sea, and separated from me by the transparent sky-blue stretch of time elapsed since that moment, the first glimpse of her in my memory, a very slight image of a face first desired and pursued, then forgotten, then found again, a face which since then I have often projected into the past, so as to say to myself, of a girl with me in my bedroom, 'That was her!

Ve gözya?lar?m? silerken de, büyüdü?üm vakit di?er insanlar?n anlams?z hayatlar?n? taklit etmeyece?ime ve bahar geldi?i zaman, e?er Paris'te olursam, davetlere gidip türlü saçmal?klar dinleyece?ime, k?rlara gidip açan ilk akdikenleri görece?ime söz veriyordum...

There can be no peace in mind of love, since what one has obtained is never anything but a new starting-point for further desires.

After leaving this park the Vivonne began to flow again more swiftly. How often have I watched, and longed to imitate, when I should be free to live as I chose, a rower who had shipped his oars and lay stretched out on his back, his head down, in the bottom of his boat, letting it drift with the current, seeing nothing but the sky which slipped quietly above him, shewing upon his features a foretaste of happiness and peace.

Regret, like desire, seeks satisfaction and not self-analysis: in the beginning of love, our time is spent not in finding out what love is made of, but in trying to make sure we can see each other tomorrow; and at the end of love, we do not try to ascertain the nature of our sorrow, but only to voice it in what we hope is its tenderest form to her who is the cause of it.

The glutton usually realizes that gout is ever ready to pounce, and that alcohol is bad for him. But possible disaster weighs light in the scale against certain pleasure.

also the constituents of his memory: this tittle-tattle enlightened me as to the incalculable proportions of absence and presence of mind, of recollection and forgetfulness which go to form the human intelligence;

Hélas! Albertine était plusieurs personnes.

Enquanto a leitura for para nós a iniciadora cujas chaves mágicas abrem no fundo de nós mesmos a porta de moradas em que não conseguiríamos penetrar, seu papel em nossa vida será salutar

I told my mother, knowing the pain I was causing her, which she did not show, and which betrayed itself in her only by that look of serious concern she wore when she compared the gravity of making me unhappy or of doing me harm, the look she had worn in Combray for the first time when she had resigned herself to spending the night beside me, that look which at this moment bore an extraordinary resemblance to that of my grandmother when she allowed me to drink cognac,

But the danger of such liaisons is that, though the subjection of the woman may briefly allay the jealousy of the man, it eventually makes it even more demanding. He reaches the point of treating his mistress like one of those prisoners who are so closely guarded that the light in their cell is never turned off.

A necessidade de falar impede não só de escutar mas também de ver, e nesse caso a ausência de qualquer descrição do meio exterior é já uma descrição de um estado interno.

In reality we always discover afterwards that our adversaries had a reason for being on the side they espoused, which has nothing to do with any element of right that there may be on that side, and that those who think as we do do so because their intelligence, if their moral nature is too base to be invoked, or their straightforwardness, if their penetration is feeble, has compelled them.

Pieni kopaus ikkunaruutuun kuin jokin olisi töytäissyt siihen, sitten väljä kevyt varina kuin ikkunasta kerrosta ylempää olisi heitetty hiekkajyviä, sittern varina laajeni, muuttui säännölliseksi, omaksui rytmin, tuli juoksevaksi, sointuvaksi, musikaaliseksi, määrittämättömäksi, kaiken käsittäväksi: satoi.

After all, my dear fellow, life, as Anaxagoras has said, is a journey.

Because one can avoid dangers by watching out while crossing the street, one has the impression that one can also avoid punishment. But punishments can come from within; and the unexpected danger may arise from the heart. The words she had spoken, "If you like, we could wrestle a bit more," now horrified

The broad daylight of habitual memory gradually fades our images of the past, wears them away until nothing is left of them and the past becomes irrecoverable.