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Marcel Proust Quotes - Page 9

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

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

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

Time, Mistake, Friendly

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

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.

Reality, Indulge In, Bearable

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

Reading, Men, Literary Merit

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

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.

Beautiful, Believe, Thinking

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

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.

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

At the heart of our friendly or purely social relations, there lurks a hostility momentarily cured but recurring by fits and starts.

Heart, Friendly, Fit

Marcel Proust (2016). “In Search of Lost Time: Or “Á la Recherche du temps perdu””, p.1490, Jester House Publishing

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'.

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

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.

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

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

Blue, Sky, Black

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

We become moral when we are unhappy.

Unhappy, Moral, Unhappiness

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.

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

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.

Girl, Women, Past

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

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.

Eye, Editors, Listening

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

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.

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

Life is extraordinarily suave and sweet with certain natural, witty, affectionate people who have unusual distinction and are capable of every vice, but who make a display of none in public and about whom no one can affirm they have a single one. There is something supple and secret about them. Besides, their perversity gives spice to their most innocent occupations, such as taking a walk in the garden at night.

Witty, Sweet, Night

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

In theory one is aware that the earth revolves, but in practice one does not perceive it, the ground upon which one treads seems not to move, and one can live undisturbed. So it is with Time in one's life.

Life, Time, Moving

Marcel Proust (2016). “In Search of Lost Time: Or “Á la Recherche du temps perdu””, p.466, Jester House Publishing

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.

War, Men, Soldier

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.

Love, Intelligent, Men

Until I saw Chardin's painting, I never realized how much beauty lay around me in my parents' house, in the half-cleared table, in the corner of a tablecloth left awry, in the knife beside the empty oyster shell.

Oysters, Knives, Parent

We have such numerous interests in our lives that it is not uncommon, on a single occasion, for the foundations of a happiness that does not yet exist to be laid down alongside the intensification of a grief from which we are still suffering.

Grief, Suffering, Foundation

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

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.

Beautiful, Judging, Different

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

Theoretically, we know that the world turns, but in fact we do not notice it, the earth on which we walk does not seem to move andwe live on in peace. This is how it is concerning Time in our lives. And to render its passing perceptible, novelists must... have their readers cross ten, twenty, thirty years in two minutes.

Time, Moving, Reading

The human plagiarism which is most difficult to avoid, for individuals... is the plagiarism of ourselves.

Individual, Plagiarism, Difficult

Nobility is often no more than the inner aspect which our egotistical feelings assume when we have not yet named and classified them.

Feelings, Assuming, Egotistical

Marcel Proust (2000). “In Search of Lost Time, Volume II: Within a Budding Grove (A Modern Library E-Book)”, p.82, Modern Library

We do not receive wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can make for us, which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world. The lives that you admire, the attitudes that seem noble to you, have not been shaped by a paterfamilias or a schoolmaster, they have sprung from very different beginnings, having been influenced by evil or commonplace that prevailed round them. They represent a struggle and a victory.

Attitude, Struggle, Journey

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