logo

Quotes About Friendship

May you always see a blue sky overhead, my young friend; and then, even when the time comes, which is coming now for me, when the woods are all black, when night is fast falling, you will be able to console yourself, as I am doing, by looking up to the sky.
~ Marcel Proust
The progress of civilization enables each one of us to manifest unsuspected virtues or new vices, which make us either dearer or more unbearable to our friends.
~ Marcel Proust
Car ce que les gens ont fait, ils le recommencent indéfiniment. Et qu'on aille voir chaque année un ami qui les premières fois n'a pu venir à votre rendez-vous, ou s'est enrhumé, on le retrouvera avec un autre rhume qu'il aura pris, on le manquera à un autre rendez-vous où il ne sera pas venu, pour une même raison permanente à la place de laquelle il croit voir des raisons variées, tirées des circonstances.
~ Marcel Proust
May you learn something from this present instance. Remember it well. Affection is always precious. What we cannot do alone in life, because there are things we cannot ask, or do, or wish, or learn by ourselves, we can do together, without there needing to be thirteen of us, as in the Balzac novel,107 or four, as in The Three Musketeers. I bid you farewell." He
~ Marcel Proust
that men can be being sincere with their friends, and even with themselves, when they speak warmly of a woman's kindness to them, even though, to tell the truth, their relationship is undermined secretly, in a way they do not confess to others or which is revealed involuntarily in response to questions, to inquiries, by a painful anxiety.
~ Marcel Proust
Belki de, diyordum kendi kendime, M. de Charlus'ün sap?kl???n?n ona kad?nca bir hassasiyet, bir zihinsel incelik kazand?rmas? gibi, Albertine'in de iyi yürekli, samimi tav?rlar?, onunla bir erkek arkada?la kurulan vefal? ve k?s?tlamas?z dostlu?u ya??yormu?um yan?lg?s?n? yaratan davran??lar?, gelecekteki ac?lar?m?n sebebi olan sap?kl???ndan kaynaklan?yordu.
~ Marcel Proust
I have never said a word to you before about my illness. But as you asked me, and as now I may die at any moment … But whatever I do I mustn't make you late; you're dining out, remember," he added, because he knew that for other people their own social obligations took precedence of the death of a friend, and could put himself in her place by dint of his instinctive politeness.
~ Marcel Proust
But we lied to each other, Robert and I, as in every conversation when one friend is genuinely anxious to help another who is desperately in love. The friend who is being counsellor, prop, comforter, may pity the other's distress but cannot share it, and the kinder he is to him the more he has to lie.
~ Marcel Proust
A cordial nature exaggerates a friend's qualities with as much pleasure as a mischievous one finds in depreciating them.
~ Marcel Proust
But as soon as I was with some one else, when I began to talk to a friend, my mind at once 'turned about,' it was towards the listener and not myself that it directed its thoughts, and when they followed this outward course they brought me no pleasure.
~ Marcel Proust
But friendship does not express itself in the same way in different people.
~ Marcel Proust
You're the cleverest man I know, do you hear?" He corrected himself, and added: "You and Elstir.—You don't mind my bracketing him with you, I hope. You understand—punctiliousness. It's like this: I say it to you as one might have said to Balzac: 'You are the greatest novelist of the century—you and Stendhal.
~ Marcel Proust
I learned that identical emotions do not spring up in the hearts of all men simultaneously, by a pre-established order. Later on I discovered that, whenever I had read for too long and was in a mood for conversation, the friend to whom I would be burning to say something would at that moment have finished indulging himself in the delights of conversation, and wanted nothing now but to be left to read undisturbed.
~ Marcel Proust
Conversation, which is friendship's mode of expression, is a superficial digression which gives us nothing worth acquiring. We may talk for a lifetime without doing more than indefinitely repeat the vacuity of a minute.
~ Marcel Proust
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.
~ Marcel Proust
I thought of you, of our walks you made so delightful, while tremendous fights were going on for the capture of a hillock you loved and where so often we had been together. Probably you, like myself, are unable to imagine that obscure Roussainville and tiresome Méséglise, whence our letters were brought and where one went to fetch the doctor when you were ill, are now celebrated places
~ Marcel Proust
Which was for me the true friend—Mme de Montmorency, so happy to ruffle my feelings and always so willing to oblige, or Mme de Guermantes, distressed at the least offense toward me and incapable of the least effort to be helpful?
~ Marcel Proust
When I talked with any one of my friends I was conscious that the original, the unique portrait of her individuality had been skilfully traced, tyranically imposed on my mind as much by the inflexions of her voice as by those of her face, and that these were two separate spectacles which rendered, each in its own plane, the same single reality.
~ Marcel Proust
At that moment I would have undertaken a mission to make Robert break with his mistress as readily as I had been to make him go and live with her permanently a few hours earlier. In the one case, Saint-Loup would have regarded me as a false friend; in the other, his family would have called me his evil genius. Yet, in that interval of a few hours, I was the same man.
~ Marcel Proust
Which was for me the true friend, Mme. de Montmorency, so glad always to annoy me and always so ready to oblige, or Mme. de Guermantes, distressed by the slightest offence that might have been given me and incapable of the slightest effort to be of use to me?
~ Marcel Proust
Robert, I'm surprised that a man of your intelligence should fail to understand that one doesn't discuss the things that will give one's friends pleasure; one does them.
~ Marcel Proust
whenever I had read for too long and was in a mood for conversation, the friend to whom I would be burning to say something would at that moment have finished indulging himself in the delights of conversation, and wanted nothing now but to be left to read undisturbed.
~ Marcel Proust
I told Morel, thinking to interest him, that M. de Norpois was a friend of my father. But not a movement of his features shewed that he had heard me, so little did he think of my parents, so far short did they fall in his estimation of what my great-uncle had been, who had employed Morel's father as his valet, and, as a matter of fact, being, unlike the rest of the family, fond of not giving trouble, had left a golden memory among his servants
~ Marcel Proust
but the steps of thought we take during the lonely work of artistic creation all lead us downward, deeper into ourselves, the only direction that is not closed to us, the only direction in which we can advance, albeit with much greater travail, toward an outcome of truth. Moreover, friendship is not just devoid of virtue, as conversation is, it is actively pernicious.
~ Marcel Proust