Marcel Proust Quotes - Page 5

Quotes about:

• The heart changes...but we learn of it only from reading or by imagination; for in reality its alteration, like that of certain natural phenomena, is so gradual that, even if we are able to distinguish, successively, each of its different states, we are still spared the actual sensation of change.

  Marcel Proust

  Reading, Heart, Reality

  23 Copy quote

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

  Marcel Proust

  Beauty, Promise, Pleasure

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

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• Death is in truth an illness from which we recover

  Marcel Proust

  Illness

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

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• People don't know when they are happy. They're never so unhappy as they think they are.

  Marcel Proust

  Thinking, People, Unhappy

  Marcel Proust (2006). “Remembrance of Things Past”, p.339, Wordsworth Editions

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• 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.

  Marcel Proust

  Book, Might, Recognition

  24 Copy quote

• Love...., ever unsatisfied, lives always in the moment that is about to come.

  Marcel Proust

  Moments, Unsatisfied

  Marcel Proust (2015). “Within A Budding Grove”, p.577, Booklassic

  32 Copy quote

• The bonds that unite us to another human being are sanctified when he or she adopts the same point of view as ourselves in judging one of our imperfections.

  Marcel Proust

  Views, Judging, Imperfection

  Marcel Proust (2000). “In Search of Lost Time, Volume II: Within a Budding Grove (A Modern Library E-Book)”, p.55, Modern Library

  22 Copy quote

• The only possible paradises are those we have lost

  Marcel Proust

  Paradise, Lost

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• Happiness serves hardly any other purpose than to make unhappiness possible.

  Marcel Proust

  Happiness, Laughter, Joy

  Marcel Proust (2006). “Remembrance of Things Past”, p.1178, Wordsworth Editions

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• 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.

  Marcel Proust

  Death, Grieving, Filled In

  58 Copy quote

• 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.

  Marcel Proust

  Life, Taken, Adversity

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

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

  Marcel Proust

  People, Dying, Literature

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

  15 Copy quote

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

  Marcel Proust

  Mind, Lasting Love, Resolution

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• 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.

  Marcel Proust

  Interesting, Doe, Firsts

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• 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.

  Marcel Proust

  Children, Soul, Age

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

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

  Marcel Proust

  Luxury, Trying, Literature

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

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• 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.

  Marcel Proust

  Art, Profound, Byzantine

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

  Marcel Proust

  Sleep, Insomnia, Light

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

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

  Marcel Proust

  Knowing, Enchantment, Firsts

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

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• 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.

  Marcel Proust

  Inspiration, Hands, Broken

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• 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.

  Marcel Proust

  Country, Views, Long

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

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• 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.

  Marcel Proust

  Atheist, Perfect, Denial

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

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

  Marcel Proust

  Morning, Three, Dear Friend

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

  Marcel Proust

  Lying, Believe, Ends

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

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• To the pure all things are pure!

  Marcel Proust

  Purity, Chastity, Confidence In Others

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

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