Quotes About Perception

draw upon his knowledge of the world, if he read in a newspaper the names of the people who had been at a dinner-party, could tell at once its exact degree of smartness, just as a man of letters, simply by reading a sentence, can estimate exactly the literary merit of its author.

He knew himself so little that he doubtless imagined that he was in love with her, perhaps indeed that he would be in love with her always

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.

My first impression of them had been quite the opposite: I had found them very ordinary, just like anyone else, but this was because, before actually meeting them, I had seen them, as I saw Balbec, Florence, and Parma, as magical names.

She was obliged, of course, to admit that Swann was not interested in money, but she would add sulkily: "It's not the same thing, you see, with him," and, as a matter of fact, what appealed to her imagination was not the practice of disinterestedness, but its vocabulary.

it appears that vice is far more common than one has been led to believe.

The truth which one puts into one's words does not make a direct path for itself, is not supported by irresistible evidence.

Marcel Proust

Là comme partout, je connais tout le monde et je ne connais personne; beaucoup les choses et fort peu les personnes. Mais les choses elles-mêmes y semblent des personnes, des personnes rares, d'une essence délicate et que la vie aurait déçue.

Distances are only the relation of space to time and vary with that relation.

Ni siquiera desde el punto de vista de las cosas más insignificantes de la vida somos los hombres un todo materialmente constituido, idéntico para todos, y del que cualquiera puede enterarse como de un pliego de condiciones o de un testamento. Nuestra personalidad social es una creación del pensamiento de los demás.

Distances are only the relation of space to time and vary with that relation. We express the difficulty that we have in getting to a place in a system of miles or kilometres which becomes false as soon as that difficulty decreases.

But the intensity of her mimicry could not fill the place of that light which is absent from our eyes so long as we do not understand what people are talking to us about.

The valet de chambre had entered. I did not tell him that I had rung several times, for I realized that hitherto all I had done was to dream that I had rung. I was alarmed to think, however, that this dream had had the clarity of a cognition. Could cognition, by the same token, have the unreality of a dream?

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.

And grief is as potent in altering reality as is drunkenness

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.

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.

But the absolute control over his facial muscles to which M. de Norpois had attained allowed him to listen without seeming to hear a word.

He had, indeed, one of the advantages which men who have lived and moved in society enjoy over those, however intelligent, who have not, namely that they no longer see it transfigured by the longing or repulsion which it inspires, but regard it as of no importance.

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.

It is I suppose comprehensible that the letters which we receive from a person are more or less similar and combine to trace an image of the writer so different from the person whom we know as to constitute a second personality.

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.