Marcel Proust Quotes

And once the novelist has brought us to this state, in which, as in all purely mental states, every emotion is multiplied ten-fold, into which his book comes disturb us as might a dream, but a dream more lucid and more abiding than those that come to us in sleep, why then, for the space of an hour he sets free within us all the joys and sorrows in the world.

But sometimes illumination comes to our rescue at the very moment when all seems lost; we have knocked at every door and they open on nothing until, at last, we stumble unconsciously against the only one through which we can enter the kingdom we have sought in vain a hundred years - and it opens.

Most of our faculties lie dormant because they can rely upon Habit, which knows what there is to be done and has no need of their services.

My only consolation when I am really sad is to love and to be loved.

Mystery is not about traveling to new places but about looking with new eyes.

Memory, instead of being a duplicate, always present before one's eyes, of the various events of one's life, is rather a void from which at odd moments a chance resemblance enables ones to resuscitate dead recollections, but even then, there are innumerable little details which have not fallen into that potential reservoir of memory, and which will remain for ever unverifiable.

La vraie vie, la vie enfin découverte et éclaircie, la seule vie par conséquent pleinement vécue, c’est la littérature.

Las lluvias de noviembre habrán corrompido las flores de mi tumba, las habrá quemado junio y mi alma seguirá llorando siempre de impaciencia.

Were it not for habit, life would seem delightful to beings constantly under threat of dying, in other words to all humankind.

Although she failed to grasp the meaning of this speech, she did understand that it might belong to the category of 'scoldings' and scenes of reproach or supplication, and her familiarity with men enabled her, without paying attention to the details of what they said, to conclude that they would not makes such scenes if they were not in love, that since they were in love it was pointless to obey them, they they would be only more in love afterward.

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

Fashions, being themselves begotten of the desire for change, are quick to change also.

Like many intellectuals, he was incapable of saying a simple thing in a simple way

For a long time I used to go to bed early.

I looked at her, at first with the sort of gaze that is not merely the messenger of the eyes, but a window at which all the senses lean out, anxious and petrified, a gaze that would like to touch the body it is looking at, capture it, take it away and the soul along with it.