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Marcel Proust Quotes - Page 8

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

... in love, barriers cannot be destroyed from the outside by the one to whom the cause despair, no matter what he does; and it isonly when he is no longer concerned with them that, suddenly, as a result of work coming

... in love, barriers cannot be destroyed from the outside by the one to whom the cause despair, no matter what he does; and it isonly when he is no longer concerned with them that, suddenly, as a result of work coming from elsewhere, accomplished within the one who did not love him, these barriers, formerly attacked without success, fall futilely.

Love, Fall, Despair

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.

Fall, Night, Young Friends

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

It is not only by dint of lying to others, but also of lying to ourselves, that we cease to notice that we are lying.

Lying, Cease

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

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.

Clouds, Laughing, Tea

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

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.

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

The past not merely is not fugitive, it remains present.

Past, Fugitive, Remains

Marcel Proust (2016). “In Search of Lost Time: Or “Á la Recherche du temps perdu””, p.1278, Jester House Publishing

Laissons les jolies femmes aux hommes sans imagination. Leave the pretty women for the men without imagination.

Men, Imagination, Pretty Woman

1925 A' la recherche du temps perdu,'Albertine disparue'.

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.

Memories, Sight, Ideas

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

Every kiss provokes another. Oh, in those earliest days of love how naturally the kisses spring to life! So closely, in their profusion, do they crowd together that lovers would find it as hard to count the kisses exchanged in an hour as to count the flowers in a meadow in May.

Spring, Flower, Kissing

The duty and the task of a writer are those of an interpreter.

Tasks, Duty, Interpreter

Marcel Proust (2016). “In Search of Lost Time: Or “Á la Recherche du temps perdu””, p.2669, Jester House Publishing

When we have passed a certain age, the soul of the child we were and the souls of the dead from whom we have sprung come to lavish on us their riches and their spells.

Children, Soul, Age

...a writer's works, like the water in an artesian well, mount to a height which is in proportion to the depth to which suffering has penetrated his soul.

Water, Soul, Suffering

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

Beautiful, Book, Language

For, just as in the beginning it is formed by desire, so afterwards love is kept in existence only by painful anxiety.

Love Is, Anxiety, Desire

Marcel Proust (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Marcel Proust (Illustrated)”, p.3648, Delphi Classics

We are ordinarily so indifferent to people that when we have invested one of them with the possibility of giving us joy, or suffering, it seems as if he must belong to some other universe, he is imbued with poetry.

Love, People, Giving

There is in this world in which everything wears out, everything perishes, one thing that crumbles into dust, that destroys itself still more completely, leaving behind still fewer traces of itself than Beauty: namely Grief.

Grief, Dust, Leaving

Marcel Proust (2016). “In Search of Lost Time: Or “Á la Recherche du temps perdu””, p.2508, Jester House Publishing

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.

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

She was "a woman of uncertain age.

Age, Uncertain

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

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

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.).

Giving Up, Believe, Heart

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

Masterpieces are no more than the shipwrecked flotsam of great minds.

Mind, Great Minds, Flotsam

Marcel Proust (1958). “By Way of Sainte-Beuve: (Contre Sainte-Beuve)”

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.

Wall, Night, Light

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

The only possible paradises are those we have lost

Paradise, Lost

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.

Fear, Learning, Essence

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

Our passions shape our books, repose writes them in the intervals.

Book, Passion, Writing

Marcel Proust (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Marcel Proust (Illustrated)”, p.4867, Delphi Classics

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