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Marcel Proust Quotes - Page 5

All Quotes Adultery Age Aids Appearance Art Attitude Belief Change Character Children Communication Creation Death Desire Doubt Duty Dying Earth Effort Failing Fashion Feelings Friendship Genius Giving Grief Grieving Happiness Happy Heart History House Humanity Illness Imagination Inspirational Journey Joy Kindness Knowledge Language Learning Life Literature Love Lying Magic Memories Morning Pain Passion Past Personality Philosophy Pleasure Quality Reading Reality Regret Sacrifice Science Silence Sleep Son Sorrow Soul Suffering Time Truth Understanding Virtue Vision Waiting War Water Wisdom Writing Youth

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.

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.

Book, Might, Recognition

If only for the sake of elegance, I try to remain morally pure.

Luxury, Trying, Literature

Marcel Proust, Philip Kolb (1983). “Marcel Proust, selected letters, 1880-1903”, HarperCollins

Women who are to some extent resistant, whom one cannot possess at once, whom one does not even know at first whether one will ever possess, are the only interesting ones.

Interesting, Doe, Firsts

It has been said that beauty is a promise of happiness. Conversely, the possibility of pleasure can be a beginning of beauty.

Beauty, Promise, Pleasure

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

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

People, Dying, Literature

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

We do not succeed in changing things according to our desire, but gradually our desire changes. The situation that we hoped to change because it was intolerable becomes unimportant. We have not managed to surmount the obstacle, as we were absolutely determined to do, but life has taken us round it, led us past it, and then if we turn round to gaze at the remote past, we can barely catch sight of it, so imperceptible has it become.

Life, Taken, Adversity

"In Search of Lost Time, Volume VI: The Sweet Cheat Gone". Book by Marcel Proust, 1925.

When we have passed a certain age, the soul of the child that we were and the souls of the dead from whom we sprang come and shower upon us their riches and their spells, asking to be allowed to contribute to the new emotions which we feel and in which, erasing their former image, we recast them in an original creation.

Children, Soul, Age

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

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.

Death, Grieving, Filled In

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.

Book, Writing, Humility

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.

Inspiration, Hands, Broken

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

Sleep, Insomnia, Light

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

with one image he would make that beauty explode into me.

Marcel Proust, James Grieve, Mark Treharne, John Sturrock, Carol E. Clark (2002). “In Search of Lost Time: Way by Swann's”

Habit is a second nature which prevents us from knowing the first, of which it has neither the cruelties nor the enchantments.

Knowing, Enchantment, Firsts

Marcel Proust, Christopher Prendergast (2002). “In Search of Lost Time: Sodom and Gomorrah”

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.

Art, Profound, Byzantine

The only true voyage of discovery, . . . would be not to visit strange lands but to possess other eyes.

Life, Travel, Eye

Marcel Proust (2006). “Remembrance of Things Past”, p.657, Wordsworth Editions

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

Lying, Believe, Ends

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

Dear Friend: I have nearly died three times since morning.

Morning, Three, Dear Friend

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

Dark, Tree, Soul

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

The highest praise of God consists in the denial of him by the atheist who finds creation so perfect that it can dispense with a creator.

Atheist, Perfect, Denial

Le Cote de Guermantes (The GuermantesWay) pt. 2 (1921) (translation by C. K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin)

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

People, Regimes, Difficult

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

Even from the simplest, the most realistic point of view, the countries which we long for occupy, at any given moment, a far larger place in our actual life than the country in which we happen to be.

Country, Views, Long

Marcel Proust (2015). “Swann's Way”, p.423, Vintage

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

Philosophy, Life Philosophy, Intonation

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

It is always during a passing state of mind that we make lasting resolutions.

Mind, Lasting Love, Resolution

To the pure all things are pure!

Purity, Chastity, Confidence In Others

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

We see things but we don't see them, like things that slid through the mind, one flowing into another.

Mind

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