“We do not include the pleasures we enjoy in sleep in the inventory of the pleasures we have experienced in the course… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
But,instead of what our imagination makes us suppose and which we worthless try to discover,life gives us something that we could hardly… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
“Those who have played a big part in one’s life very rarely disappear from it suddenly for good. They return to it… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
“The wretchedness of ordinary life, endured so gaily when it is part of our normal existence, is made far worse when it… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
Not caring for their lives' is it? Why, what in the world is there that we should care for if it's not… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
“We must have imagination, awakened by the uncertainty of being able to attain our object, to create a goal which hides our… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
Reading is at the threshold of the spiritual life; it can introduce us to it. It does not constitute it ... There… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
We passionately long that there may be another life in which we shall be similar to what we are here below. But… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
“It is said that nothing in our lives is ever lost, that nothing can prevent its having been. That is why, so… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
Even in the most insignificant details of our daily life, none of us can be said to constitute a material whole, which… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
I understood that all the material of a literary work was in my past life, I understood that I had acquired it… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
“The places that we have known belong now only to the little world of space on which we map them for our… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
“It is the same in life; the heart changes, and that is our worst misfortune; but we learn of it only from… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
“Moreover — just as in moments of musing contemplation of nature, the normal actions of the mind being suspended, and our abstract… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
We do not succeed in changing things according to our desire, but gradually our desire changes. The situation that we hoped to… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
“I had reached the point, at Balbec, of regarding the pleasure of playing with a troop of girls as less destructive of… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
“make use of some such alarm signals as mad-doctors adopt in dealing with their distracted patients; as by beating several times on… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
“The facts of life do not penetrate to the sphere in which our beliefs are cherished; they did not engender those beliefs,… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
“...and he would have also to endure his book like a form of fatigue, to accept it like a discipline, build it… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
“...for if our life is vagabond our memory is sedentary and though we ourselves rush ceaselessly forward our recollections, indissolubly bound to… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
“The sea refreshes our imagination because it does not make us think of human life; yet it rejoices the soul, because, like… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
“And it is, after all, as good a way as any of solving the problem of existence to get near enough to… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
In theory one is aware that the earth revolves, but in practice one does not perceive it, the ground upon which one… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
“My mother had not forgotten the sad end of M. Vinteuil’s life, his complete absorption, first in having to play both mother… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
“...guided the sentence that was drawing to an end towards that which was waiting to begin, now hastening, now slackening the pace… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
“The belief that a person has a share in an unknown life to which his or her love may win us admission… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
“Yes, I have been forced to whittle down the facts, and to be a liar, but it is not one universe, but… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
Certainly, it is more reasonable to devote one's life to women than to postage stamps or old snuff-boxes, even to pictures or… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
“Ah, in those earliest days of love how naturally the kisses spring into life! So closely, in their profusion, do they crowd… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
“For at that time everything which was not myself, the earth and the creatures upon it, seemed to me more precious, more… — 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
...that melancholy which we feel when we cease to obey orders which, from one day to another, keep the future hidden, and… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
“I have every useless thing in the world in my house there. The only thing wanting is the necessary thing, a great… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
Reading is at the threshold of spiritual life; it can introduce us to it; it does not constitute it. There are, however,… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
The places we have known do not belong solely to the world of space in which we situate them for our greater… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
People do not die for us immediately, but remain bathed in a sort of aura of life which bears no relation to… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
We are less justified in saying that the thinking life of humanity is a miraculous perfectioning of animal and physical life than… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
There is no more ridiculous custom than the one that makes you express sympathy once and for all on a given day… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
“There is no man...however wise, who has not at some period in his youth said things, or lived a life, the memory… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
“We trust in love as we trust in life, without thinking of the underlying emptiness, without too much believing in it. We… — 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
