Quotes About Life

Admirava a impotência do espírito, do raciocínio e do coração em operarem a mínima conversão, em resolverem uma só dessas dificuldades, que em seguida a vida, sem que se saiba ao menos como o fez, tão facilmente soluciona.

Carus Amicus Mussaeus, Ah! Quod tempus, bonus Deus, Landerirette Imbre sumus perituri. And La Moussaye reassures him with: Securae sunt nostrae vitae Sumus enim Sodomitae Igne tantum perituri Landeriri.

Swann's illness was the same that had killed his mother, who had been attacked by it at precisely the age which he had now reached. Our existences are in truth, owing to heredity, as full of cabalistic ciphers, of horoscopic castings as if there really were sorcerers in the world. And just as there is a certain duration of life for humanity in general, so there is one for families in particular, that is to say, in any one family, for the members of it who resemble one another.

When I raised a corner of the heavy curtain of habit (the stupefying habit which during the whole course of our life conceals from us almost the whole universe, and in the dead of night, without changing the label, substitutes for the most dangerous or intoxicating poisons of life some kind of anodyne which does not procure any delight), such a memory would come back to me

Life is strewn with these miracles for which people who love can always hope.

The sight of Albertine's bare throat, of those too rosy cheeks, had so intoxicated me (that is to say had placed the reality of the world for me no longer in nature, but in the torrent of sensations that I could barely contain) that this sight had destroyed the equilibrium between the immense and indestructible life that circulated in my being and the life of the universe, so puny in comparison.

Assim vai mudando o nosso coração, durante a vida, e esta é a pior das dores; porém só a conhecemos através da leitura, pela imaginação: na realidade o coração se trasnforma da mesma maneiracomo se produzem certos fenômenos da natureza, tão vagarosamente que, embora possamos verificar de modo sucessivo seus estados diferentes, em compensação nos foge a própria sensação de mudança.

there comes in all lives a time, towards which you still have far to go, when the weary eyes can endure but one kind of light, the light which a fine evening like this prepares for us in the stillroom of darkness, when the ears can listen to no music save what the moonlight breathes through the flute of silence.

such suffering, owed to her, in compensation, the possibility of receiving the strange call which had come to me and which I would never again cease to hear—as it were the promise that something else existed, something perhaps reachable through art, besides the nothingness that I had found in all pleasures, and even in love, and that even if my life seemed so empty, at least it was not over.

Los hechos no penetran en el mundo donde viven nuestras creencias, y como no les dieron vida no las pueden matar; pueden estar desmintiéndolas constantemente sin debilitarlas, y un alud de desgracia o enfermedades que una tras otra padece una familia, no le hace dudar de la bondad de su Dios ni de la pericia de su médico.

Thus the face of things in life changes, the centre of empires, the register of fortunes, the chart of positions, all that seemed final, are perpetually remoulded and during his life-time a man can witness the completest changes just where those seemed to him least possible

A mentira é essencial à humanidade. Ela desempenha entre nós um papel tão grande, talvez, quanto o da procura do prazer, e, de resto, é comandada por essa procura. Mentimos para proteger nosso prazer ou nossa honra, se por acaso a divulgação do prazer é contrária à honra. Mentimos durante a vida toda, e sobretudo, e talvez somente, àqueles que nos amam. Só estes, realmente, nos fazem recear a sorte de nosso prazer e desejar-lhes a estima.

the mean and narrow outlook of the pedant, whom those who are most contemptuous of him in the impartiality of their own minds are only too prone to copy when they are obliged to play a part upon the vulgar stage of life.

But the mistake she made was only an extreme and desiccated instance of the countless mistakes, more trivial, more pointed, unintentional, or deliberate, that accompany our names on the particular index card the world allots us.

I was trapped in the present, as heroes are, or drunkards; in brief eclipse, my past had ceased to project in front of me that shadow of itself which we call our future; seeing the purpose of my life not in any past dreams coming true but in the simple bliss of the passing moment, I could see no further than that moment.

To make [reading] into a discipline is to give too large a role to what is only an incitement. Reading is on the threshold of a spiritual life. It can introduce us to it; it does not constitute it.

since my sorrow was directed not at what Albertine had been for me but at what my heart, desiring to participate in the more general emotions of love, had come to persuade me that she was; then I realized that this life which had so bored me—or at least so I thought—had, on the contrary, been delicious;

But life, gradually revealing to me the permanence of our needs, had taught me that if a person is unobtainable we have to settle for someone else, and I felt that what I had asked of Albertine could have been supplied by another, like Mlle de Stermaria.

timpul meu nu-i chiar atît de pre?ios; cel care l-a f?cut, nu ni l-a vîndut.

when I sensed that my life could be one of fulfillment, and should therefore have seen it as having increased in value, that I felt liberated from the anxieties it had hitherto inspired in me, and was prepared to commit it without hesitation to the unsure hands of chance.

From a certain age onwards vanity and wisdom combine to ensure that the things we desire the most are those that seem not to matter to us. But in love, simple foresight—which is probably not real wisdom—forces us to develop this talent for duplicity early in life.

But, less disappointing than life is, great works of art do not begin by giving us all their best.

Indeed it seemed to me, in the moments when I suffered the least, that I almost benefited from her death, for a woman is all the more useful in our lives if she is an agent of sorrow rather than an element of happiness, and there is not a single woman whose possession is as precious as the truths which she enables us to discover by making us suffer.

I am not working for posterity, M. de Charlus replied, I am content with life, it is quite interesting enough, as poor Swann used to say.