Marcel Proust Quotes - Page 7

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But sometimes the future is latent in us without our knowing it, and our supposedly lying words foreshadow an imminent reality.

Marcel Proust

Lying, Reality, Knowing

Marcel Proust (2000). “In Search of Lost Time, Volume IV: Sodom and Gomorrah (A Modern Library E-Book)”, p.54, Modern Library

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Pleasures are like photographs: in the presence of the person we love, we take only negatives, which we develop later, at home, when we have at our disposal once more our inner dark room, the door of which it is strictly forbidden to open while others are present.

Marcel Proust

Home, Dark, Doors

Marcel Proust (2003). “In the shadow of young girls in flower”, ePenguin

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Our worst fears, like our greatest hopes, are not outside our powers, and we can come in the end to triumph over the former and to achieve the latter.

Marcel Proust

Triumph, Achieve, Ends

Marcel Proust (2003). “In Search of Lost Time: Finding Time Again”, ePenguin

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Now are the woods all black, But still the sky is blue.

Marcel Proust

Blue, Sky, Black

Marcel Proust (2006). “Remembrance of Things Past”, p.129, Wordsworth Editions

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After a certain age our memories are so intertwined with one another that what we are thinking of, the book we are reading, scarcely matters any more. We have put something of ourselves everywhere, everything is fertile, everything is dangerous, and we can make discoveries no less precious than in Pascal's Pensées in an advertisement for soap.

Marcel Proust

Memories, Reading, Book

Marcel Proust, Charles Kenneth Scott-Moncrieff, Dennis Joseph Enright (1992). “The captive, The fugitive”

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Often it is just lack of imagination that keeps a man from suffering very much.

Marcel Proust

Men, Imagination, Suffering

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According to a charming law of nature which is evident even in the most sophisticated societies, we live in complete ignorance of whatever we love.

Marcel Proust

Ignorance, Law, Sophisticated

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

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Sometimes in the afternoon sky the moon would pass white as a cloud, furtive, lusterless, like an actress who does not have to perform yet and who, from the audience, in street clothes, watches the other actors for a moment, making herself inconspicuous, not wanting anyone to pay attention to her.

Marcel Proust

Moon, White, Clothes

Marcel Proust (2003). “Swann's Way”, Viking Press

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A work in which there are theories is like an object which still has the ticket that shows its price.

Marcel Proust

Tickets, Theory, Shows

Marcel Proust (1970). “The past recaptured”, Random House (NY)

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No exile at the South Pole or on the summit of Mont Blanc separates us more effectively from others than the practice of a hidden vice.

Marcel Proust

Practice, Vices, Literature

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

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Let a prize lower my position, if it causes me to be read; that I prefer immediately to all the honors.

Marcel Proust

Honor, Causes, Position

Marcel Proust (1966). “Letters of Marcel Proust”

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The places we have known do not belong solely to the world of space in which we situate them for our greater convenience. They were only a thin slice among contiguous impressions which formed our life at that time; the memory of a certain image is but regret for a certain moment; and houses, roads, avenues are as fleeting, alas, as the years.

Marcel Proust

Memories, Regret, Years

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

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A certain similarity exists, although the type evolves, between all the women we love, a similarity that is due to the fixity of our own temperament, which it is that chooses them, eliminating all those who would not be at once our opposite and our complement, fitted that is to say to gratify our senses and to wring our heart.

Marcel Proust

Heart, Opposites, Type

Marcel Proust (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Marcel Proust (Illustrated)”, p.1182, Delphi Classics

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After a certain age, the more one becomes oneself, the more obvious one's family traits become.

Marcel Proust

Age, Certain, Obvious

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A sleeping man holds in a circle around him the thread of the hours, the order of years and of worlds. He consults them instinctively upon awaking and in one second reads in them the point of the earth that he occupies, the time past until his arousal; but their ranks can be mingled or broken.

Marcel Proust

Time, Sleep, Men

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For although we know that the years pass, that youth gives way to old age, that fortunes and thrones crumble (even the most solid among them) and that fame is transitory, the manner in which—by means of a sort of snapshot—we take cognisance of this moving universe whirled along by Time, has the contrary effect of immobilising it.

Marcel Proust

Moving, Mean, Years

Marcel Proust (2000). “In Search of Lost Time, Volume VI: Time Regained (A Modern Library E-Book)”, p.402, Modern Library

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A powerful idea communicates some of its power to the man who contradicts it. Partaking of the universal community of minds, it infiltrates, grafts itself on to, the mind of him who it refutes, among other contiguous ideas, with the aid of which, counter-attacking, he complements and corrects it; so that the final verdict is always to some extent the work of both parties to a discussion.

Marcel Proust

Powerful, Party, Men

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

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For women who do not love us, as for the "disappeared", knowing that we no longer have any hope does not prevent us form continuing to wait. We live on our guard, on watch; women whose son has gone asea on a dangerous exploration imagine at any minute, although it has long been certain that he has perished, that he will enter, miraculously saved, and healthy.

Marcel Proust

Love, Death, Hope

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In his younger days a man dreams of possessing the heart of the woman whom he loves; later, the feeling that he possesses the heart of a woman may be enough to make him fall in love with her.

Marcel Proust

Love, Dream, Fall

Marcel Proust (2016). “Swann's Way”, p.263, Marcel Proust

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Everybody calls "clear" those ideas which have the same degree of confusion as his own.

Marcel Proust

Teaching, Ideas, Confusion

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...the nose is generally the organ in which stupidity is most readily displayed.

Marcel Proust

Stupidity, Noses, Organs

Marcel Proust (2006). “Remembrance of Things Past”, p.269, Wordsworth Editions

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Those whose suffering is due to love are, as we say of certain invalids, their own physicians.

Marcel Proust

Suffering, Physicians, Certain

Marcel Proust (2006). “Remembrance of Things Past”, p.578, Wordsworth Editions

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She poured out Swann's tea, inquired "Lemon or cream?" and, on his answering "Cream, please," said to him with a laugh: "A cloud!" And as he pronounced it excellent, "You see, I know just how you like it." This tea had indeed seemed to Swann, just as it seemed to her; something precious, and love has such a need to find some justification for itself, some guarantee of duration, in pleasures which without it would have no existence and must cease with its passing.

Marcel Proust

Clouds, Laughing, Tea

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

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It's odd how a person always arouses admiration for his moral qualities among the relatives of another with whom he has sexual relations. Physical love, so unjustifiably decried, makes everyone show, down to the least detail, all he has of goodness and self-sacrifice, so that he shines even in the eyes of those nearest to him.

Marcel Proust

Love, Eye, Sacrifice

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These dreams reminded me that, since I wished some day to become a writer, it was high time to decide what sort of books I was going to write. But as soon as I asked myself the question, and tried to discover some subject to which I could impart a philosophical significance of infinite value, my mind would stop like a clock, my consciousness would be faced with a blank, I would feel either that I was wholly devoid of talent or perhaps that some malady of the brain was hindering its development.

Marcel Proust

Dream, Book, Philosophical

Marcel Proust (2000). “In Search of Lost Time, Volume I: Swann's Way (A Modern Library E-Book)”, p.251, Modern Library

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

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