“Monsieur Beulier never engaged in thought except to speak the truth, and never spoke except to express his thought.” — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
The truth is that men can have several sorts of pleasure. The true pleasure is the one for which they abandon the… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
“We remember the truth because it has a name, is rooted in the past, but a makeshift lie is quickly forgotten.” — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
It is not only by dint of lying to others, but also of lying to ourselves, that we cease to notice that… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
The truth is that every morning war is declared afresh. And the men who wish to continue it are as guilty as… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
There is not a woman in the world the possession of whom is as precious as that of the truths which she… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
Lies are essential to humanity. They are perhaps as important as the pursuit of pleasure and moreover are dictated by that pursuit. — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
“Cathedrals are to be adored until the day when, to preserve them, it would be necessary to deny the truths which they… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
We may have revolved every possible idea in our minds, and yet the truth has never occurred to us, and it is… — 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
“Truth and life are very difficult to fathom, and I retained of them, without really having got to know them, an impression… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
“A person has no need of sincerity, nor even of skill in lying, in order to be loved. Here I mean by… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
“The truth, even more, is that life is perpetually weaving fresh threads which link one individual and one event to another, and… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
The truth has no need to be uttered to be made apparent, and ... one may perhaps gather it with more certainty,… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
“even when a political truth is enshrined in written documents, it is seldom that these have any more value than a radiographic… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
“The lie, the perfect lie, about people we know, about the relations we have with them, about our motive for some action,… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
Every reader, as he reads, is actually the reader of himself. The writer's work is only a kind of optical instrument he… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
Our intellect is not the most subtle, the most powerful, the most appropriate, instrument for revealing the truth. It is life that,… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
“We imagine always when we speak that it is our own ears, our own mind, that are listening. The truth which one… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
“The things about which we most often jest are generally, on the contrary, the things that worry us but that we do… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
“The truth was that, with the Duchess de Luxembourg, with Mme de Morienval, Mme de Saint-Euverte and any number of others, the… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
“Next to this central belief which,while I was reading, would be constantly reaching out from my inner self to the outer world,… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
“As long as reading is for us the instigator whose magic keys have opened the door to those dwelling-places deep within us… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
“Had my parents allowed me, when I read a book, to pay a visit to the region it described, I should have… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
“All those beings who revealed truths to me and who were no longer there, seemed to me to have lived a life… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
“The novelist’s happy discovery was to think of substituting for those opaque sections, impenetrable by the human spirit, their equivalent in immaterial… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
“In the case of Albertine, I felt that I should never discover anything, that, out of that tangled mass of details of… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
“Lies, so often misleading and which form the substance of all conversations, are less effective in covering up a feeling of dislike… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
It is up to my spirit to find the truth. But how? Grave uncertainty, each time the spirit feels beyond its own… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
“But she was wrong; it was what gave her away; she had not taken into account that this fragmentary detail of the… — 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
