Quotes from Marcel Proust

No doubt it is because memories do not remain true for ever, and because life is made up of the endless renewal of cells, that love is not eternal.

Such effects of Habit may seem contradictory; but the laws which govern it are many and varied. In Paris, it was because of Habit that I had become more and more indifferent to Gilberte. The change in my habits—that is, the momentary suspension of Habit—put its finishing touch to that process when I set off for Balbec. Habit may weaken all things, but it also stabilizes them; it brings about a dislocation, but then makes it last indefinitely.

All the products of one period resemble one another; the artists who illustrate the poetry of their generation are the same artists who are employed by the big financial houses.

My ——" or "My dearest ——" followed by my Christian name, which, if we give the narrator the same name as the author of this book, would be 'My Marcel,' or 'My dearest Marcel.' After this I would never allow my relatives, by calling me 'dearest,' to rob of their priceless uniqueness the delicious words that Albertine uttered to me

After a certain age, and even if our inner development varies, the more we become ourselves, the more family characteristics are accentuated. For, while maintaining the harmonious design of its tapestry, Nature breaks up the monotony of the composition by the variety in the faces that it inserts.

Humane motives are too sacred for the person they are used to appeal to not to bow before them, whether he believes them to be sincere or not; I did not wish for a moment to appear to be weighing up the relative importance of my invitation and the possible fatigue of Mme de Guermantes, and I promised to say nothing to her about the object of my visit, acting as though I had been completely taken in by this rigmarole M. de Guermantes had staged for my benefit.

We pardon the crimes of individuals, but not their participation in a collective crime.

the knowledge that the hour was approaching when her husband ought to arrive without knowing whether or not he would send one of those telegrams of which the model had been wittily invented by M. de Guermantes: "Impossible to come, lie follows," paled her cheeks and ringed her eyes.

But when a belief vanishes, there survives it—more and more vigorously so as to cloak the absence of the power, now lost to us, of imparting reality to new things—a fetishistic attachment to the old things which it did once animate, as if it was in them and not in ourselves that the divine spark resided, and as if our present incredulity had a contingent cause—the death of the gods.

She had guessed that Françoise was not over-fond of her son-in-law, and that he spoiled the pleasure she found in visiting her daughter, as the two could not talk so freely when he was there. And so one day, when Françoise was going to their house, some miles from Combray, Mamma said to her, with a smile: "Tell me, Françoise, if Julien has had to go away, and you have Marguerite to yourself all day, you will be very sorry,

Marcel retrospectively remembers moments of anxious anticipation just as he imagines in advance moments when he will have forgotten what he is now feeling. For in fact we negotiate with the memory of our emotions, as much as, if not more than, with our raw emotions themselves.

praise of God consists in the denial of him by the atheist who finds creation so perfect that it can dispense with a creator. And I was well aware, too, that it was not merely a work of art

Y, a partir de aquel instante, yo no tenía que dar ni un solo paso, el suelo caminaba por mí en aquel jardín

For existence is of little interest save on days when the dust of realities is mingled with magic sand, when some trivial incident becomes a springboard for romance. Then a whole promontory of the inaccessible world emerges from the twilight of dream and enters our life, our life in which, like the sleeper awakened, we actually see the people of whom we had dreamed with such ardent longing that we had come to believe that we should never see them except in our dreams

Men who believe that their work will last—as was the case with Elstir—form the habit of placing that work in a period when they themselves will have crumbled into dust. And thus, by obliging them to reflect on their own extinction, the thought of fame saddens them because it is inseparable from the thought of death

in my cowardice I became at once a man,

As for our sentiments, we have spoken of them too often to repeat again now that as often as not love is nothing more than the association of the face of a girl (whom otherwise we should soon have found intolerable) with the heartbeats inseparable from an endless, vain expectation, and from some trick that she has played upon us. All this is true not merely of imaginative young men brought into contact with changeable girls.

to our paying too much attention to the aspect, the manners of what a person is not but would like to be, in forming our first impression of that person. To the outward appearance affectation, imitation, the longing to be admired, whether by the good or by the wicked, add misleading similarities of speech and gesture.

Berma in Andromaque, in Les Caprices de Marianne, in Phèdre, was one of

For every death is for others a simplification of life, it spares them the necessity of showing gratitude, the obligation of paying calls.

It is quite likely that this Jewish community, like any other, perhaps more than any other, could boast of many charms, qualities, and virtues. The enjoyment of these, however, was restricted to its members. The fact was they were disliked; and this, once they became aware of it, became a proof in their eyes of anti-Semitism, against which they ranged themselves in a dense phalanx, closing ranks in the face of a world that was, in any case, of no mind to join their group.

As for our feelings, we need hardly repeat that love is often only the association between the image of a girl (of whom otherwise we would very quickly have tired) and the increased heart rate inseparable from a long, futile wait when the young lady in question has "stood us up.

Bizim için büyülü anahtarlar? olan içimizdeki derin, nüfuz edemeyece?imiz yerlerin kap?lar?n? açan yol gösterici oldu?u sürece, okuman?n ya?am?m?zdaki rolü sa??lt?c?d?r.

to seek happiness in the satisfaction of a desire of the mind was as naive as to attempt to reach the horizon by walking straight ahead. The further the desire advances, the further does real possession recede. So that if happiness, or at least the absence of suffering, can be found, it is not the satisfaction, but the gradual reduction and eventual extinction of desire that one should seek.