“The anaesthetic effect of habit being destroyed, I would begin to think - and to feel - such melancholy things.” — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
Most of our faculties lie dormant because they can rely upon Habit, which knows what there is to be done and has… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
The fixity of a habit is generally in direct proportion to its absurdity. — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
Habit is a second nature which prevents us from knowing the first, of which it has neither the cruelties nor the enchantments. — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
The time at our disposal each day is elastic; the passions we feel dilate it, those that inspire us shrink it, and… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
The features of our face are hardly more than gestures which force of habit made permanent. Nature, like the destruction of Pompeii,… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
Habit is, of all the plants of human growth, the one that has the least need of nutritious soil in order to… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
Habit! that skillful but slow arranger, which starts out by letting our spirit suffer for weeks in a temporary state, but that… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
The time which we have at our disposal every day is elastic; the passions we feel expand it, those that we inspire… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
We only really know what is new, what suddenly introduces to our sensibility a change of tone which strikes us, that for… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
Habit! that skilful but slow-moving arranger who begins by letting our minds suffer for weeks on end in temporary quarters, but whom… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
Our vanity, our passions, our spirit of imitation, our abstract intelligence, our habits have long been at work, and it is the… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
When one becomes for an instant one's former self, that is to say different from what one has been for some time… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
“And from that instant I did not have to take another step; the ground moved forward under my feet in that garden… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
“As a rule it is with our being reduced to a minimum that we live; most of our faculties lie dormant because… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
“I was so much in the habit of having Albertine with me, and now I suddenly saw a new aspect of Habit.… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
I cannot express the uneasiness caused in me by this intrusion of mystery and beauty into a room I had at last… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
This labour of the artist to discover a means of apprehending beneath matter and experience, beneath words, something different from their appearance,… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
“machinery' of life at Versailles; and was able, too, to persuade herself that her silence, a shade of good humour or of arrogance on… — Marcel Proust Copy Share
“For her [Françoise], wealth was like a necessary condition without which virtue would lack both merit and charm. She made so little distinction between… — Marcel Proust Copy Share
Knowing does not always allow us to prevent, but at least the things that we know, we hold them, if not in our hands,… — Marcel Proust Copy Share
...a writer's works, like the water in an artesian well, mount to a height which is in proportion to the depth to which suffering… — Marcel Proust Copy Share
“Then from those profound slumbers we awake in a dawn, not knowing who we are, being nobody, newly born, ready for anything, the brain… — Marcel Proust Copy Share
“Art extracted from the most familiar reality does indeed exist and its domain is perhaps the largest of any.” — Marcel Proust Copy Share
I find very reasonable the Celtic belief that the souls of our dearly departed are trapped in some inferior being, in an animal, aplant,… — Marcel Proust Copy Share
“When you heard anyone in the middle of a talk which was being deliberately kept off the Affair announce furtively some piece of political… — Marcel Proust Copy Share
“We betroth ourselves by proxy, and then feel obliged to marry the intermediary.” — Marcel Proust Copy Share
“But the old lady on the contrary, far from justifying her daughter’s fears, felt every time someone of her own age “disappeared” that she… — Marcel Proust Copy Share
Often it is just lack of imagination that keeps a man from suffering very much. — Marcel Proust Copy Share
“When we are nice to others, we generally lose all claim to their respect.” — Marcel Proust Copy Share
“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 Copy Share
