Marcel Proust Quotes - Page 9

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• So we don't believe that life is beautiful because we don't recall it but if we get a whiff of a long-forgotten smell we are suddenly intoxicated and similarly we think we no longer love the dead because we don't remember them but if by chance we come across an old glove we burst into tears.

  Marcel Proust

  Beautiful, Believe, Thinking

  Marcel Proust, Philip Kolb (1992). “Marcel Proust, Selected Letters: 1910-1917”, HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

  13 Copy quote

• We can sometimes find a person again, but we cannot abolish time. And so on until the unforeseen day, gloomy as a winter night, when one no longer seeks that girl, or any other, when to find her would actually scare one. For one no longer feels that one has attractions enough to please, or strength enough to love. Not, of course, that one is in the strict sense of the word impotent. And as for loving, one would love more than ever. But one feels that it is too big an undertaking for the little strength one has left.

  Marcel Proust

  Girl, Winter, Night

  Marcel Proust (2000). “In Search of Lost Time, Volume IV: Sodom and Gomorrah (A Modern Library E-Book)”, p.348, Modern Library

  7 Copy quote

• Beautiful books are always written in a sort of foreign language.

  Marcel Proust

  Beautiful, Book, Language

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• She was "a woman of uncertain age.

  Marcel Proust

  Age, Uncertain

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• Existence is of little interest save on days when the dust of realities is mingled with magic sand.

  Marcel Proust

  Reality, Dust, Magic

  Marcel Proust (2000). “In Search of Lost Time, Volume II: Within a Budding Grove (A Modern Library E-Book)”, p.526, Modern Library

  7 Copy quote

• The artist who gives up an hour of work for an hour of conversation with a friend knows that he is sacrificing a reality for something that does not exist (our friends being friends only in the light of an agreeable folly which travels with us through life and to which we readily accommodate ourselves, but which at the bottom of our hearts we know to be no more reasonable than the delusion of the man who talks to the furniture because he believes that it is alive.).

  Marcel Proust

  Giving Up, Believe, Heart

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

  6 Copy quote

• We construct our lives for one person, and when at length it is ready to receive her that person does not come; presently she is dead to us, and we live on, prisoners within the walls which were intended only for her.

  Marcel Proust

  Wall, Doe, Length

  Marcel Proust (2000). “In Search of Lost Time, Volume II: Within a Budding Grove (A Modern Library E-Book)”, p.253, Modern Library

  6 Copy quote

• The great renunciation of old age as it prepared for death, wraps itself up in its chrysalis, which may be observed at the end of lives that are at all prolonged, even in old lovers who have lived for one another, in old friends bound by the closest ties of mutual sympathy, who, after a certain year, cease to make the necessary journey or even to cross the street to see one another, cease to correspond, and know that they will communicate no more in this world.

  Marcel Proust

  Journey, Years, Ties

  Marcel Proust (2000). “In Search of Lost Time, Volume I: Swann's Way (A Modern Library E-Book)”, p.212, Modern Library

  12 Copy quote

• May you always see a blue sky overhead, my young friend; and then, even when the time comes, as it has come for me now, when the woods are black, when night is fast falling, you will be able to console yourself, as I do, by looking up at the sky.

  Marcel Proust

  Fall, Night, Young Friends

  Marcel Proust (2015). “Swann's Way”, p.130, Vintage

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• We exist only by virtue of what we possess, we possess only what is really present to us, and many of our memories, our moods, our ideas sail away on a voyage of their own until they are lost to sight! Then we can no longer take them into account in the total which is our personality. But they know of secret paths by which to return to us.

  Marcel Proust

  Memories, Sight, Ideas

  Marcel Proust (1982). “Remembrance of Things Past: The captive. The fugitive. Time regained”, Vintage

  4 Copy quote

• I had come in time to learn that it was a mistake to smile a friendly smile when somebody made a fool of me.

  Marcel Proust

  Time, Mistake, Friendly

  Marcel Proust (2016). “In Search of Lost Time: Or “Á la Recherche du temps perdu””, p.2157, Jester House Publishing

  8 Copy quote

• We must love men more than things, and I admire and weep more for the soldiers than for the churches which were only the recording of an heroic gesture which today is reenacted at every moment.

  Marcel Proust

  War, Men, Soldier

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• We have nothing to fear and a great deal to learn from trees, that vigorours and pacific tribe which without stint produces strengthening essences for us, soothing balms, and in whose gracious company we spend so many cool, silent, and intimate hours.

  Marcel Proust

  Fear, Learning, Essence

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

  14 Copy quote

• As to the pretty girls who went past, from the day on which I had first known that their cheeks could be kissed, I had become curious about their souls. And the Universe had appeared to me more interesting.

  Marcel Proust

  Girl, Women, Past

  Marcel Proust (2006). “Remembrance of Things Past”, p.648, Wordsworth Editions

  7 Copy quote

• Many years have passed since that night. The wall of the staircase up which I had watched the light of his candle gradually climb was long ago demolished. And in myself, too, many things have perished which I imagined would last for ever, and new ones have arisen, giving birth to new sorrows and new joys which in those days I could not have foreseen, just as now the old are hard to understand.

  Marcel Proust

  Wall, Night, Light

  Marcel Proust (2008). “The Senses of Consciousness: Swann's Way in Half”, p.33, Lulu.com

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• Nous sommes tous oblige s, pour rendre la re alite supportable, d'entretenir en nous quelques petites folies. We must all indulge in a few follies if we are to make reality bearable.

  Marcel Proust

  Reality, Indulge In, Bearable

  5 Copy quote

• A man of letters, merely by reading a phrase, can estimate exactly the literary merit of its author.

  Marcel Proust

  Reading, Men, Literary Merit

  Marcel Proust (2016). “Swann's Way”, p.326, Marcel Proust

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• People who are not in love fail to understand how an intelligent man can suffer because of a very ordinary woman. This is like being surprised that anyone should be stricken with cholera because of a creature so insignificant as the common bacillus.

  Marcel Proust

  Love, Intelligent, Men

  29 Copy quote

• We become moral when we are unhappy.

  Marcel Proust

  Unhappy, Moral, Unhappiness

  4 Copy quote

• We are less justified in saying that the thinking life of humanity is a miraculous perfectioning of animal and physical life than that it is an imperfection in the organization of spiritual life as rudimentary as the communal existence of protozoa in colonies.

  Marcel Proust

  Spiritual, Thinking, Animal

  Marcel Proust (2016). “TIME REGAINED (Modern Classics Series): Metaphysical Novel - Coming to a Full Circle (In Search of Lost Time)”, p.296, e-artnow

  5 Copy quote

• Our desires cut across one another, and in this confused existence it is rare for happiness to coincide with the desire that clamoured for it.

  Marcel Proust

  Confused, Cutting, Desire

  Marcel Proust (2000). “In Search of Lost Time, Volume II: Within a Budding Grove (A Modern Library E-Book)”, p.79, Modern Library

  4 Copy quote

• There is no doubt that a person's charms are less frequently a cause of love than a remark such as: 'No, this evening I shan't be free'.

  Marcel Proust

  Doubt, Evening, Causes

  Marcel Proust (2000). “In Search of Lost Time, Volume IV: Sodom and Gomorrah (A Modern Library E-Book)”, p.245, Modern Library

  4 Copy quote

• One reads the papers as one wants to with a bandage over one's eyes without trying to understand the facts, listening to the soothing words of the editor as to the words of one s mistress.

  Marcel Proust

  Eye, Editors, Listening

  Marcel Proust (2015). “Remembrance of Things Past Time Regained”, p.43, Marcel Proust

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• The reason why life may be judged to be trivial although at certain moments it seems to us so beautiful is that we form our judgment, ordinarily, not on the evidence of life itself but of those quite different images which preserve nothing of life-and therefore we judge it disparagingly.

  Marcel Proust

  Beautiful, Judging, Different

  Marcel Proust (2000). “In Search of Lost Time, Volume VI: Time Regained (A Modern Library E-Book)”, p.260, Modern Library

  12 Copy quote

• The tiny, initial clue ... by allowing us to imagine what we do not know, stimulates a desire for knowledge.

  Marcel Proust

  Knowledge, Desire, Tiny

  Marcel Proust (2006). “Remembrance of Things Past”, p.236, Wordsworth Editions

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