Marcel Proust Quotes - Page 14

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

Marcel Proust

Life, Art, Disappointment

Marcel Proust (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Marcel Proust (Illustrated)”, p.863, Delphi Classics

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It is the wicked deception of love that it begins by making us dwell not upon a woman in the outside world but upon a doll inside our head, the only woman who is always available in fact, the only one we shall ever possess, whom the arbitrary nature of memory, almost as absolute as that of the imagination, may have made as different from the real woman as the real Balbec had been from the Balbec I imagined- a dummy creation that little by little, to our own detriment, we shall force the real woman to resemble.

Marcel Proust

Memories, Real, Imagination

Marcel Proust, Christopher Prendergast (2004). “The Guermantes Way”, Viking Press

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A collection of bad love songs, tattered from overuse, has to touch us like a cemetery or a village. So what if the houses have no style, if the graves are vanishing under tasteless ornaments and inscriptions? Before an imagination sympathetic and respectful enough to conceal momentarily its aesthetic disdain, that dust may release a flock of souls, their beaks holding the still verdant dreams that gave them an inkling of the next world and let them rejoice or weep in this world.

Marcel Proust

Dream, Song, Dust

Marcel Proust, Joachim Neugroschel, Roger Shattuck (2003). “The Complete Short Stories of Marcel Proust”, p.127, Rowman & Littlefield

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Perhaps the pleasure one feels in writing is not the infallible test of the literary value of a page; perhaps it is only a secondary state which is often superadded, but the want of which can have no prejudicial effect on it. Perhaps some of the greatest masterpieces were written while yawning.

Marcel Proust

Writing, Yawning, Want

Marcel Proust (2000). “In Search of Lost Time, Volume II: Within a Budding Grove (A Modern Library E-Book)”, p.460, Modern Library

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Most of our faculties lie dormant because they can rely upon Habit, which knows what there is to be done and has no need of their services.

Marcel Proust

Lying, Rely Upon, Needs

Marcel Proust (2006). “Remembrance of Things Past”, p.600, Wordsworth Editions

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At that time, he was satisfying a sensual curiosity by experiencing the pleasures of people who live for love. He had believed he could stop there, that he would not be obliged to learn their sorrows; how small a thing her charm was for him now compared with the astounding terror that extended out from it like a murky halo, the immense anguish of not knowing at every moment what she had been doing, of not possessing her everywhere and always!

Marcel Proust

Knowing, People, Sensual

Marcel Proust (2003). “In Search of Lost Time: The Way by Swann's”, p.369, Penguin UK

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When I went to Venice I found that my dream had become-incredibly, but quite simply-my address.

Marcel Proust

Dream, Venice, Addresses

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Everything that seems imperishable tends to extinguishment.

Marcel Proust

Seems

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And so when studying faces, we do indeed measure them, but as painters, not as surveyors.

Marcel Proust

Faces, Study, Appearance

Marcel Proust (2000). “In Search of Lost Time, Volume II: Within a Budding Grove (A Modern Library E-Book)”, p.621, Modern Library

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We shall see later on that the diversity of the forms of death that circulate invisibly is the cause of the peculiar unexpectedness of obituary notices in the newspapers.

Marcel Proust

Death, Diversity, Peculiar

Marcel Proust (2000). “In Search of Lost Time, Volume IV: Sodom and Gomorrah (A Modern Library E-Book)”, p.327, Modern Library

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Indeed, among the lesser auxiliaries to success in love, an absence, the declining of an invitation to dinner, an unintentional, unconscious harshness are of more service than all the cosmetics and fine clothes in the world.

Marcel Proust

Fashion, Clothes, World

Marcel Proust (2016). “The Guermantes Way”, p.461, Marcel Proust

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Similarly the men who produce works of genius are not those who live in the most delicate atmosphere, whose conversation is most brilliant, or their culture broadest, but those who have had the power, ceasing in a moment to live only for themselves, to make use of their personality as of a mirror.

Marcel Proust

Character, Men, Mirrors

Marcel Proust (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Marcel Proust (Illustrated)”, p.884, Delphi Classics

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Now the same mystery which often veils from our eyes the reason for a catastrophe envelops just as frequently, when love is in question, the suddenness of certain happy solutions, such as had been brought to me by Gilberte's letter. Happy, or at least seemingly happy, for there are few that can really be happy when we are dealing with a sentiment of such a kind that any satisfaction we can give it does no more, as a rule, than dislodge some pain. And yet sometimes a respite is granted us, and we have for a little while the illusion of being healed.

Marcel Proust

Pain, Eye, Love Is

Marcel Proust (1981). “Remembrance of Things Past: Swann's way. Within a budding grove”, New York : Random House

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People who, not being in love themselves, feel that a clever man should only be unhappy about a person who is worth his while; which is rather like being astonished that anyone should condescend to die of cholera at the bidding of so insignificant a creature as the comma bacillus.

Marcel Proust

Clever, Being In Love, Men

Marcel Proust “Swann’s Way”, W. W. Norton & Company

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For often I have wished to see a person again without realising that it was simply because that personal recalled to me a hedge of hawthorns in blossom, and I have been led to believe, and to make someone else believe, in a renewal of affection, by what was no more than an inclination to travel.

Marcel Proust

Believe, Affection, Renewal

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The soldier is convinced that a certain indefinitely extendable time period is accorded him before he is killed, the burglar before he is caught, men in general, before they must die. That is the amulet which preserves individuals — and sometimes populations — not from danger, but from the fear of danger, in reality from the belief in danger, which in some cases allows them to brave it without being brave. Such a confidence, just as unfounded, supports the lover who counts on a reconciliation, a letter.

Marcel Proust

Reality, Men, Support

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I find very reasonable the Celtic belief that the souls of our dearly departed are trapped in some inferior being, in an animal, aplant, an inanimate object, indeed lost to us until the day, which for some never arrives, when we find that we pass near the tree, or come to possess the object which is their prison. Then they quiver, call us, and as soon as we have recognized them, the spell is broken. Freed by us, they have vanquished death and return to live with us.

Marcel Proust

Death, Animal, Broken

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To a great extent, suffering is a sort of need felt by the organism to make itself familiar with a new state, which makes it uneasy, to adapt its sensibility to that state.

Marcel Proust

Suffering, Needs, States

Marcel Proust (2006). “Remembrance of Things Past”, p.1127, Wordsworth Editions

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None of us constitutes a material whole, identical for everyone, which a person has only to go look up as though we were a book of specifications or a last testament; our social personality is a creation of the minds of others. Even the very simple act that we call "seeing a person we know" is in part an intellectual one. We fill the physical appearance of the individual we see with all the notions we have about him, and of the total picture that we form for ourselves, these notions certainly occupy the greater part.

Marcel Proust

Book, Simple, Personality

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Even in the most insignificant details of our daily life, none of us can be said to constitute a material whole, which is identical for everyone, and need only be turned up like a page in an account-book or the record of a will; our social personality is created by the thoughts of other people.

Marcel Proust

Book, People, Personality

Marcel Proust (2008). “The Senses of Consciousness: Swann's Way in Half”, p.15, Lulu.com

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And so it is with our own past. It is a labour in vain to attempt to recapture it: all the efforts of our intellect must prove futile. The past is hidden somewhere outside the realm, beyond the reach of intellect, in some material object (in the sensation which that material object will give us) of which we have no inkling. And it depends on chance whether or not we come upon this object before we ourselves must die.

Marcel Proust

Past, Giving, Effort

Marcel Proust (2010). “In Search Of Lost Time Vol 1: Swann's Way”, p.51, Random House

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Which of course is followed by: For those who have Awareness, a hint is quite enough. For the multitudes of heedless mere knowledge is useless. Haji Bektash Veli We don't receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us.

Marcel Proust

Spiritual, Journey, Hints

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Neurosis has an absolute genius for malingering. There is no illness which it cannot counterfeit perfectly. If it is capable of deceiving the doctor, how should it fail to deceive the patient

Marcel Proust

Lying, Doctors, Neurosis

Le Cote de Guermantes Pt 1

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The opinions which we hold of one another, our relations with friends and kinsfolk are in no sense permanent, save in appearance, but are as eternally fluid as the sea itself.

Marcel Proust

Sea, Opinion, Appearance

Marcel Proust (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Marcel Proust (Illustrated)”, p.1903, Delphi Classics

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It is desire that engenders belief and if we fail as a rule to take this into account, it is because most of the desires that create beliefs end only with our own life.

Marcel Proust

Desire, Belief, Failing

"Remembrance of Things Past".

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Born: July 10, 1871
Died: November 18, 1922
Occupation: Novelist
Cite this Page: Citation

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