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Marcel Proust Quotes about Art

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Thanks to art, instead of seeing one world, our own, we see it multiplied and as many original artists as there are, so many worlds are at our disposal.

Thanks to art, instead of seeing one world, our own, we see it multiplied and as many original artists as there are, so many worlds are at our disposal.

Art, World, Thanks

Marcel Proust (2015). “Remembrance of Things Past Time Regained”, p.161, Marcel Proust

Through art alone are we able to emerge from ourselves, to know what another person sees of a universe which is not the same as our own and of which, without art, the landscapes would remain as unknown to us as those that may exist on the moon.

Art, Persons, Knows

"In Search of Lost Time, Volume VI: Time Regained".

Only by art can we get outside ourselves, instead of seeing only one world, our own, we see it under multiple forms.

Art, World, Form

Marcel Proust (1932). “Cities of the Plain”

We think and name in one world, we live and feel in another.

Art, Philosophy, Thinking

Everything we think of as great has come to us from neurotics. It is they and they alone who found religions and create great works of art. The world will never realize how much it owes to them and what they have suffered in order to bestow their gifts on it.

Depression, Art, Thinking

Le Cote de Guermantes (The GuermantesWay) pt. 1 (1921). George Seldes, The Great Thoughts, quotes Ramon Guthrie: "This passage was meant to show what fools people who are capable of uttering such idiocies are... . It is slap-stick irony that Proust puts into the mouth of a fool (Boulbon) in order to show what a fool he was."

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

Thanks to art, instead of seeing one world only, our own, we see that world multiply itself and we have at our disposal as many worlds as there are original artists, worlds more different one from the other than those which revolve in infinite space, worlds which, centuries after the extinction of the fire from which their light first emanated, whether it is called Rembrandt or Vermeer, send us still each one its special radiance.

Art, Space, Fire

Marcel Proust, Joanna Kilmartin (1992). “In Search of Lost Time: Time regained. VI”, Random House (UK)

All the great things we know have come to us from neurotics. It is they who have founded religions and created great works of art.

Art, Great Work, Great Things

For everyone who, having no artistic sense-that is to say, no submission to subjective reality-may have the knack of reasoning about art till doomsday, especially if he be, in addition, a diplomat or financier in contact with the 'realities' of the present day, is only too ready to believe literature is an intellectual game which is destined to gradually be abandoned as time goes on.

Art, Believe, Reality

Our vanity, our passions, our spirit of imitation, our abstract intelligence, our habits have long been at work, and it is the task of art to undo this work of theirs, making us travel back in the direction from which we have come to the depths where what has really existed lies unknown within us.

Art, Lying, Passion

Marcel Proust (2000). “In Search of Lost Time, Volume VI: Time Regained (A Modern Library E-Book)”, p.300, Modern Library

Only through art can we get outside of ourselves and know another's view of the universe which is not the same as ours and see landscapes which otherwise would remain unknown to us like the landscapes of the moon. Thanks to art, instead of seeing a single world, our own, we see it multiply until we have before us as many worlds as there are original artists.

Art, Moon, Views

A sort of egotistical self-evaluation is unavoidable in those joys in which erudition and art mingle and in which aesthetic pleasure may become more acute, but not remain as pure.

Art, Self, Joy

Marcel Proust's preface (1910) to John Ruskin "The Bible of Amiens" translated by Marcel Proust (1904); later quoted in "Marcel Proust: On Reading Ruskin" translated by Jean Autret and Philip J. Wolfe (p. 53), 1987.

A work should convey its entire meaning by itself, imposing it on the spectator even before he knows what the subject is.

Art, Philosophy, History

Less disappointing than life, great works of art do not begin by giving us all their best.

Life, Art, Disappointment

Marcel Proust (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Marcel Proust (Illustrated)”, p.863, Delphi Classics

The great quality of true art is that it rediscovers, grasps and reveals to us that reality far from where we live, from which we get farther and farther away as the conventional knowledge we substitute for it becomes thicker and more impermeable.

Art, Reality, Quality

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

What artists call posterity is the posterity of the work of art.

Art, Work, Posterity

Marcel Proust (2016). “In Search of Lost Time: Or “Á la Recherche du temps perdu””, p.512, Jester House Publishing

I believe that all true art is classic, but the dictates of the mind rarely permit of its being recognized as such when it first appears.

Art, Believe, Mind

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

The particulars of life do not matter to the artist; they merely provide him with the opportunity to lay bare his genius.

Art, Opportunity, Genius

Marcel Proust (2000). “In Search of Lost Time, Volume II: Within a Budding Grove (A Modern Library E-Book)”, p.509, Modern Library

True variety is in that plenitude of real and unexpected elements, in the branch charged with blue flowers thrusting itself, against all expectations, from the springtime hedge which seems already too full, while the purely formal imitation of varietyis but void and uniformity, that is, that which is most opposed to variety.

Art, Real, Flower

I was not at all worried about finding my doctor boring; I expected from him, thanks to an art of which the laws escaped me, that he pronounce concerning my health an indisputable oracle by consulting my entrails.

Art, Law, Doctors

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