Marcel Proust Quotes

...we need to bear in mind that our opinion of other people, our ties with friends or family, have only the semblance of fixity and are, in fact, as eternally fluid as the sea.

What criterion ought one to adopt to judge one's fellows? After all, there was not a single person he knew who might not, in certain circumstances, prove capable of a shameful action.

And then, gradually, the memory of her would fade away, I had forgotten the girl of my dream.

...but the loss of a memory, like the omission of a phrase during reading, rather than making for uncertainty, can lead to a premature certainty.

But it is always easy to put together stories about a past which nobody any longer remembers, like those about journeys to countries where nobody has ever been.

The being that I shall be after death has no more reason to remember the man I have been since my birth than the latter to remember what I was before it.

For with the perturbations of memory are linked the intermittencies of the heart.

And like an aviator who rolls painfully along the ground until, abruptly, he breaks away from it, I felt myself being slowly lifted towards the silent peaks of memory.

that profit which good things bestowed on us by teaching to seek pleasure elsewhere than in the barren satisfaction of worldly wealth.

She was not yet dead. But I was already alone.

Forgive me, Bertrand, for having on that day loved in you a beauty in which your self-esteem could take no pride, which could not in any way determine my affection.

I must choose to cease from suffering or to cease from loving.

So few are the easy victories as the ultimate failures.

We consider it innocent to desire, and heinous that the other person should do so.

There is nothing like desire for obstructing any resemblance between what one says and what one has on one's mind.

It is a mistake, " Labruyère tells us, "to be in love without an ample fortune.

... sterile, splendid torture of understanding and loving...

One wants to be understood because one wants to be loved, and one wants to be loved because one loves.

The best vaccine against anger is to watch others in its throes.

To determine not to think of it was but to think of it still, to suffer from it still.

The habit of thinking prevents us at times from experiencing reality, immunises us against it, makes it seem no more than any other thought.

Quite half of the human race was in tears.

Her [Odette's] eyes were beautiful, but so large they seemed to droop beneath their own weight, strained the rest of her face and always made her appear unwell or in a bad mood.

So what I had believed to be nothing to me was simply my entire life. How ignorant one is of oneself.

M. de Charlus persisted in not replying. I thought I could see a smile flicker about his lips: the smile of the man who looks down from a great height on the characters and manners of lesser men.

It is a mistake to speak of a bad choice in love, since as soon as there is a choice it can only be a bad one.

... the objects which we admire have no absolute value in themselves...

The mistakes of doctors are innumerable. They err as a rule out of optimism as to the treatment, and pessimism as to the outcome.

When we are nice to others, we generally lose all claim to their respect.

He [Bloch] was one of those touchy, highly-strung people who cannot bear to have made a blunder, will not admit it to themselves, and whose whole day is ruined by it.

... novels contained something inexpressibly delicious.

Monsieur Beulier never engaged in thought except to speak the truth, and never spoke except to express his thought.

We forgive the crimes of individuals, but not their participation in a collective crime.

And if she had appeared, would I have dared to speak to her?

... the kiss, the bodily surrender which would seem natural and but moderately attractive...

We do not include the pleasures we enjoy in sleep in the inventory of the pleasures we have experienced in the course of our existence.

I spent many a charming evening talking and playing with Albertine, but none so sweet as when I was watching her sleep.

the comfort of reclusion, the poetry of hibernation

The beauty of images lies behind things, the beauty of ideas in front of them.

Ideas are substitutes for sorrows...

...for each of us sees clarity only in those ideas which have the same degree of confusion as his own.

... I should have been struck down by the despair a young lover feels who has sworn lifelong fidelity, when a friend speaks to him of the other mistresses he will have in time to come.

Even his mother, his own mother, had once accused him of being a snob.

An excellent but an eccentric man in whom the least little thing would, it seemed, often check the flow of his spirits and divert the current of his thoughts.

I never allow myself to be influenced in the smallest degree either by atmospheric disturbances or by the arbitrary divisions of what is known as Time.

His [Morel's] nature was really like a sheet of paper that has been folded so often in every direction that it is impossible to straighten it out.

I have built, deep in my heart, a chapel filled with you.

... it was with an unusual intensity of pleasure, a pleasure destined to have a lasting effect upon his character and conduct...

The glutton usually realizes that gout is ever ready to pounce, and that alcohol is bad for him. But possible disaster weighs light in the scale against certain pleasure.

... I experienced, suddenly, that special pleasure, which bore no resemblance to any other...