Quotes from Marcel Proust

But certain favourite parts are played by us so often before the public and rehearsed so carefully when we are alone that we find it easier to refer to their fictitious testimony than to that of a reality which we have almost entirely forgotten.

Some philosophers argue that the external world does not exist and that it is only within ourselves that our lives evolve. Be that as it may, love, even in its humblest beginnings, is a striking example of how little reality means for us. If I had had to draw, describe or inventory the details of Mlle d'Éporcheville's features from memory, or even to recognize her in the street, I would have found it impossible.

The particulars of life do not matter to the artist; they merely provide him with the opportunity to lay bare his genius.

For the very ones who are right, like Françoise, have also to be wrong, so that Justice becomes an impossibility

I tried to speak to Mamma but my voice broke, and, bursting into tears, I stayed for a long time, my head on her shoulder, crying, tasting, accepting, relishing my grief, now that I knew that it had departed from my life, as we like to exalt ourselves by forming virtuous plans which circumstances do not permit us to put into execution.

People praise to us the sweetness, the purity of a virgin. But quite soon one feels that something spicier would be more appealing and one advises her to be bolder in her manners. In herself, was she rather one than the other? Perhaps not, but capable of taking on so many different forms in the rushing current of life.

Les grands littérateurs n'ont jamais fait qu'une seule oeuvre.

How many times in the course of my life reality had disappointed me because at the moment when I perceived it, my imagination, which was my only means of enjoying beauty, could not be applied to it by virtue of the inevitable law which only allows us to imagine that which is absent.

But, as a matter of fact, we each derived a certain satisfaction from the mannerism, being still at the age in which one believes that one gives a thing real existence by giving it a name.

It was the time when well-bred people observed the rule of affability and what was called the rule of the three adjectives.

Although Albertine existed in my memory only in the states in which she had appeared successively during her life, that is, subdivided into a series of temporal fractions, my thoughts, restoring her unity, reconstituted her as a person, and it is on this person that I wanted to form an overall judgment, to know whether she had lied, whether she had loved women, and whether it was in order to be free to frequent them that she had left me.

Let but a single real feature—the little that one distinguishes of a woman seen from afar or from behind—enable us to project the form of beauty before our eyes, we imagine that we have seen her before, our heart beats, we hasten in pursuit, and will always remain half-persuaded that it was she, provided that the woman has vanished: it is only if we manage to overtake her that we realise our mistake.

He had always found a peculiar fascination in tracing in the paintings of the Old Masters, not merely the general characteristics of the people whom he encountered in his daily life, but rather what seems least susceptible of generalisation, the individual features of men and women whom he knew,

Albertine had thus premeditated her escape for some time. This was the greatest misfortune of my life. And in spite of everything, the suffering which it caused me was perhaps even exceeded by my curiosity to know the causes of this disaster: whom Albertine had desired, for whom she had left me.

always wrapped in the mystery of the Merovingian age,

?nsan bir sebep varsa gider. Gidece?ini söyler. Kar??s?ndakine cevap hakk? tan?r. Öyle çekip gidilmez.

But the old lady on the contrary, far from justifying her daughter's fears, felt every time someone of her own age "disappeared" that she had gained a victory in a contest against formidable competitors.

The telephone was not yet at that date as commonly in use as it is today. And yet habit requires so short a time to divest of their mystery the sacred forces with which we are in contact, that, not having had my call at once, my immediate thought was that it was all very long and very inconvenient, and I almost decided to lodge a complaint.

My solitude has become even more profound, and I know nothing of the sun but what your letter tells me. It has thus been a blessed messenger, and contrary to the proverb, this single swallow has made for me an entire spring.

In vain I called upon it now. In vain I compressed the whole landscape into my field of vision, draining it with an exhaustive gaze which sought to extract from it a female creature.

I raised my eyes to those flavescent, frizzy locks and felt myself caught in their swirl and swept away, with a throbbing heart, amid the lightning and the blasts of a hurricane of beauty.

we do not know what a thing is until we have approached it with our intelligence.

For the instinct of imitation and absence of courage govern society and the mob alike.

My happiness and my life needed Albertine to be virtuous, thus they had posited once for all that she was. Armed with this salutary faith, I could safely allow my mind to play sadly with the suppositions which it formulated without believing in them. I thought, "Perhaps she does love women," as one thinks, "I might die during the night"; we say the words to ourselves, but we do not believe them, we make plans for the morrow.