Quotes About Reflection

Não tinha à minha frente mais que um senhor de casaca que se ia afastando; mas eu manobrava em seu redor, como um refletor defeituoso, e sem conseguir aplicá-lo exatamente sobre ele, o pensamento de que era o príncipe de Saxe e ia ver a princesa de Guermantes.

Quand on aime, l'amour est trop grand pour pouvoir être contenu tout entier en nous; il irradie vers la personne aimée, rencontre en elle une surface qui l'arrête, le force à revenir vers son point de départ et c'est ce choc en retour de notre propre tendresse que nous appelons les sentiments de l'autre et qui nous charme plus qu'à l'aller, parce que nous ne reconnaissons pas qu'elle vient de nous.

Possibly they knew better than I did that the Duchesse de Guise was Princess of Cleves, of Orléans, of Porcien, and so forth, but long before they knew all these names, they had known the Duchesse de Guise's face, which was subsequently what this name reflected back to them. I had begun with the fairy, even if she was soon fated to perish; they had begun with the woman herself.

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.

Those who produce works of genius are not those who spend their days in the most refined company, whose conversation is the most brilliant, or whose culture is the broadest; they are those who have the ability to stop living for themselves and make a mirror of their personality, so that their lives, however nondescript they may be socially, or even in a way intellectually, are reflected in it. For genius lies in reflective power, and not in the intrinsic quality of the scene reflected.

Marcel Proust

When one feels oneself smitten by love for a woman, one ought to say to oneself, 'What are 'her surroundings? What has been her life?' All one's future happiness lies in the answer.

La vraie vie, [...] c'est la littérature.

For just as it is not the desire to become famous but the habit of being laborious that enables us to produce a finished work, so it is not the activity of the present moment but wise reflexions from the past that help us to safeguard the future.

in the state of mind in which we "observe" we are a long way below the level to which we rise when we create.

Reality is formed only by memory.

That purpose allows the chain of spent days to slip away, holding on only to the very end of it, often of a quite different metal from the links that have vanished in the night, and in the journey which we make through life, counts as real only in the place in which we at any given moment are.

which there was already installed a lady with a massive face, old and ugly, with a masculine expression, very much in her Sunday best, who was reading the Revue des Deux Mondes. Notwithstanding her commonness, she was eclectic in her tastes, and I found amusement in asking myself to what social category she could belong; I at once concluded that she must be the manager of some large brothel, a procuress on holiday. Her face, her manner, proclaimed the fact aloud.

To think that I have wasted years of my life, that I have longed for death, that the greatest love that I have ever known has been for a woman who did not please me, who was not in my style!

Just as it is not the wish to be famous, but a habit of hard work, that may make a creative artist of us, so it is not the joy we take in the present, but sober reflection on the past, that may enable us to safeguard the future.

Suddenly there came a memory which I had not seen for a long time, for it had remained dissolved in the transparent, fluid expanses of my memory, until it formed into crystals.

Hâlâ mümkün olan bir ?eyden dakika dakika art?k mümkün olmayan bir ?eye geçi?te, insan?n göz yumup kendi eliyle derinle?tirdi?i bir ac? var.

This book of mine has not been manufactured: it has been garnered.

Sadness had reigned in undisputed sovereignty over his shadowed childhood.

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.

Jean would be conscious of a curious feeling that he was living simultaneously in the immediate presence of a particular day and in other similar days of long ago.

It is the tragedy of other people that they are merely showcases for the very perishable collections of one's own mind.

je cherche encore mon chemin, je tourne une rue… mais… c'est dans mon cœur…

Memory, instead of being a duplicate always present before our eyes of the various events of our life, is rather an abyss from which at odd moments a chance resemblance enables us to draw up, restored to life, dead impressions; but even then there are innumerable little details which have not fallen into that potential reservoir of memory, and which will remain for ever beyond our control.