Marcel Proust Quotes - Page 5

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• The fixity of a habit is generally in direct proportion to its absurdity.

  Marcel Proust

  Habit, Proportion, Absurdity

  10 Copy quote

• The heart changes...but we learn of it only from reading or by imagination; for in reality its alteration, like that of certain natural phenomena, is so gradual that, even if we are able to distinguish, successively, each of its different states, we are still spared the actual sensation of change.

  Marcel Proust

  Reading, Heart, Reality

  24 Copy quote

• Our intonations contain our philosophy of life, what each of us is constantly telling himself about things.

  Marcel Proust

  Philosophy, Life Philosophy, Intonation

  Marcel Proust (1948). “The Maxims of Marcel Proust”

  9 Copy quote

• There comes in all our lives a time ... when the ears can listen to no music save what the moonlight breathes through the flute of silence.

  Marcel Proust

  Silence, Ears, Flutes

  Marcel Proust (2015). “Swann's Way”, p.138, Vintage

  17 Copy quote

• Your soul is a dark forest. But the trees are of a particular species, they are genealogical trees.

  Marcel Proust

  Dark, Tree, Soul

  Marcel Proust (1957). “Pleasures and days: and other writings”

  27 Copy quote

• How paradoxical it is to search reality for the pictures that are stored in one's memory.

  Marcel Proust

  Memories, Reality, Paradoxical

  5 Copy quote

• A little insomnia is not without its value in making us appreciate sleep, in throwing a ray of light upon that darkness.

  Marcel Proust

  Sleep, Insomnia, Light

  Marcel Proust (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Marcel Proust (Illustrated)”, p.2717, Delphi Classics

  16 Copy quote

• The bonds that unite us to another human being are sanctified when he or she adopts the same point of view as ourselves in judging one of our imperfections.

  Marcel Proust

  Views, Judging, Imperfection

  Marcel Proust (2000). “In Search of Lost Time, Volume II: Within a Budding Grove (A Modern Library E-Book)”, p.55, Modern Library

  23 Copy quote

• The most familiar precepts are not always the truest.

  Marcel Proust

  Truth, Familiar, Truest

  Marcel Proust (1982). “Remembrance of Things Past: Swann's Way & Within a Budding Grove”, Vintage

  9 Copy quote

• We say that the hour of death cannot be forecast, but when we say this we imagine that hour as placed in an obscure and distant future. It never occurs to us that it has any connection with the day already begun or that death could arrive this same afternoon, this afternoon which is so certain and which has every hour filled in advance.

  Marcel Proust

  Death, Grieving, Filled In

  59 Copy quote

• Friendship is in the end no more than: " . . . a lie which seeks to make us believe that we are not irremediably alone."

  Marcel Proust

  Lying, Believe, Ends

  Marcel Proust (2000). “Marcel Proust, Selected Letters: 1918-1922”

  7 Copy quote

• A woman one loves rarely suffices for all our needs, so we deceive her with another whom we do not love.

  Marcel Proust

  Love, Hype, Infidelity

  Marcel Proust (2006). “Remembrance of Things Past”, p.1024, Wordsworth Editions

  15 Copy quote

• To write that essential book, a great writer does not need to invent it but merely to translate it, since it already exists in each one of us. The duty and task of a writer are those of translator.

  Marcel Proust

  Book, Writing, Humility

  34 Copy quote

• If there is one thing more difficult than submitting oneself to a regime it is refraining from imposing it on other people.

  Marcel Proust

  People, Regimes, Difficult

  Marcel Proust (2006). “Remembrance of Things Past”, p.419, Wordsworth Editions

  4 Copy quote

• To the pure all things are pure!

  Marcel Proust

  Purity, Chastity, Confidence In Others

  Marcel Proust (2006). “Remembrance of Things Past”, p.1081, Wordsworth Editions

  10 Copy quote

• The thirst for something other than what we have…to bring something new, even if it is worse, some emotion, some sorrow; when our sensibility, which happiness has silenced like an idle harp, wants to resonate under some hand, even a rough one, and even if it might be broken by it.

  Marcel Proust

  Inspiration, Hands, Broken

  7 Copy quote

• The only possible paradises are those we have lost

  Marcel Proust

  Paradise, Lost

  5 Copy quote

• Things don't change, but by and by our wishes change.

  Marcel Proust

  Friendship, Change, Perspective

  6 Copy quote

• It is not because other people are dead that our affection for them grows faint, it is because we ourselves are dying.

  Marcel Proust

  People, Dying, Literature

  Marcel Proust (2006). “Remembrance of Things Past”, p.937, Wordsworth Editions

  16 Copy quote

• In times like ours, where the growing complexity of life leaves us barely the time to read the newspapers, where the map of Europehas endured profound rearrangements and is perhaps on the brink of enduring yet others, where so many threatening and new problems appear everywhere, you will admit it may be demanded of a writer that he be more than a fine wit who makes us forget in idle and byzantine discussions on the merits of pure form.

  Marcel Proust

  Art, Profound, Byzantine

  47 Copy quote

• Every reader, as he reads, is actually the reader of himself. The writer's work is only a kind of optical instrument he provides the reader so he can discern what he might never have seen in himself without this book. The reader's recognition in himself of what the book says is the proof of the book's truth.

  Marcel Proust

  Book, Might, Recognition

  25 Copy quote

• People don't know when they are happy. They're never so unhappy as they think they are.

  Marcel Proust

  Thinking, People, Unhappy

  Marcel Proust (2006). “Remembrance of Things Past”, p.339, Wordsworth Editions

  9 Copy quote

• The loss of a sense adds as much beauty to the world as its acquisition.

  Marcel Proust

  Beauty, Loss, Acquisition

  Marcel Proust (2016). “In Search of Lost Time: Or “Á la Recherche du temps perdu””, p.965, Jester House Publishing

  5 Copy quote

• We believe we can change things according to our wishes because that's the only happy solution we can see. We don't think of what usually happens and what is also a happy solution; things don't change, but by and by our wishes change.

  Marcel Proust

  Believe, Thinking, Perspective

  8 Copy quote

• To be an artist is to fail, as no other dare to fail... failure is his world and the shrink from it desertion

  Marcel Proust

  Artist, World, Failing

  11 Copy quote

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