Marcel Proust Quotes - Page 9

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• 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.

  Marcel Proust

  Beautiful, Believe, Thinking

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

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• 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.

  Marcel Proust

  Wall, Night, Light

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

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• 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.

  Marcel Proust

  Fear, Learning, Essence

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

  14 Copy quote

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

  Marcel Proust

  Time, Mistake, Friendly

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

  8 Copy quote

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

  Marcel Proust

  Heart, Friendly, Fit

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

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• 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.

  Marcel Proust

  Reality, Indulge In, Bearable

  5 Copy quote

• 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.

  Marcel Proust

  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

  6 Copy quote

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

  Marcel Proust

  Reading, Men, Literary Merit

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

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• 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.

  Marcel Proust

  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

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• 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'.

  Marcel Proust

  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

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• We become moral when we are unhappy.

  Marcel Proust

  Unhappy, Moral, Unhappiness

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• 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.

  Marcel Proust

  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

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  Marcel Proust

  Girl, Women, Past

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

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• 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.

  Marcel Proust

  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

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• 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.

  Marcel Proust

  Eye, Editors, Listening

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

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• 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.

  Marcel Proust

  Life, Time, Moving

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

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• 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.

  Marcel Proust

  Witty, Sweet, Night

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

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• 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.

  Marcel Proust

  War, Men, Soldier

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• 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.

  Marcel Proust

  Love, Intelligent, Men

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• 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.

  Marcel Proust

  Oysters, Knives, Parent

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• So long as I know what's boiling in my pot I don't bother my head about what's in other people's.

  Marcel Proust

  Long, People, Pot

  Marcel Proust (2006). “Remembrance of Things Past”, p.871, Wordsworth Editions

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• 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.

  Marcel Proust

  Beautiful, Judging, Different

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

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• 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.

  Marcel Proust

  Grief, Suffering, Foundation

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

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• 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.

  Marcel Proust

  Time, Moving, Reading

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

  Marcel Proust

  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

  7 Copy quote

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