Art Quotes by Marcel Proust

Only by art can we get outside ourselves, instead of seeing only one world, our own, we see it under multiple forms.

— Marcel Proust

Only through art can we emerge from ourselves and know what another person sees.

— Marcel Proust

What artists call posterity is the posterity of the work of art.

— Marcel Proust

“A work in which there are theories is like an object which still has its price-tag on.”

— Marcel Proust

“Art extracted from the most familiar reality does indeed exist and its domain is perhaps the largest of any.”

— Marcel Proust

Less disappointing than life, great works of art do not begin by giving us all their best.

— Marcel Proust

“It's far more difficult to disfigure a great work of art than to create one.”

— Marcel Proust

We think and name in one world, we live and feel in another.

— Marcel Proust

A work should convey its entire meaning by itself, imposing it on the spectator even before he knows what the subject is.

— Marcel Proust

Thanks to art, instead of seeing one world, our own, we see it multiplied and as many original artists as there are,…

— Marcel Proust

The particulars of life do not matter to the artist; they merely provide him with the opportunity to lay bare his genius.

— Marcel Proust

“An artist, however modest, is always willing to hear himself preferred to his rivals, and tries only to see that justice is…

— Marcel Proust

All the great things we know have come to us from neurotics. It is they who have founded religions and created great…

— Marcel Proust

I was not at all worried about finding my doctor boring; I expected from him, thanks to an art of which the…

— Marcel Proust

I believe that all true art is classic, but the dictates of the mind rarely permit of its being recognized as such…

— Marcel Proust

“(an excellent man, with whom I am sorry now that I did not converse more often, for, even if he cared nothing…

— Marcel Proust

True variety is in that plenitude of real and unexpected elements, in the branch charged with blue flowers thrusting itself, against all…

— Marcel Proust

Everything we think of as great has come to us from neurotics. It is they and they alone who found religions and…

— Marcel Proust

The only true voyage, the only bath in the Fountain of Youth, would be not to visit strange lands but to possess…

— Marcel Proust

Our vanity, our passions, our spirit of imitation, our abstract intelligence, our habits have long been at work, and it is the…

— Marcel Proust

“We enjoy lovely music, beautiful paintings, a thousand intellectual delicacies, but we have no idea of their cost, to those who invented…

— Marcel Proust

The great quality of true art is that it rediscovers, grasps and reveals to us that reality far from where we live,…

— Marcel Proust

Through art alone are we able to emerge from ourselves, to know what another person sees of a universe which is not…

— Marcel Proust

“It was the quartets of Beethoven (numbers 12,13,14, and 15) which over fifty years, created and expanded the the audience of listeners…

— Marcel Proust

“All the products of one period have something in common; the artists who illustrate the poetry of their generation are the same…

— Marcel Proust

“And more even than the painter, the writer, in order to achieve volume and substance, in order to attain to generality and,…

— Marcel Proust

“Compared with that of a great artist, the friendliness of a great nobleman, however charming it may be, seems like play-acting, like…

— Marcel Proust

“But should a sensation from the distant past-like those musical instruments that record and preserve the sound and style of the various…

— Marcel Proust

“Formerly, in my attempts to isolate this talent, I deducted, so to speak, from what I heard, the part itself, a part,…

— Marcel Proust

“At such moments Gilberte’s plaits used to brush my cheek. They seemed to me, in the fineness of their grain, at once…

— Marcel Proust

“Through art alone are we able to emerge from ourselves, to know what another person sees of a universe which is not…

— Marcel Proust

“While Elstir, at my request, went on painting, I wandered about in the half-light, stopping to examine first one picture, then another.…

— Marcel Proust

“This new concept of the "finest, highest achievement of art" had no sooner entered my mind than it located the imperfect enjoyment…

— Marcel Proust

“...the mode by which he "heard" the universe and projected it far beyond himself. Perhaps it was in this, I said to…

— Marcel Proust

To be an artist is to fail, as no other dare to fail... failure is his world and the shrink from it…

— Marcel Proust

The artist who gives up an hour of work for an hour of conversation with a friend knows that he is sacrificing…

— Marcel Proust

“Art is not alone in imparting charm and mystery to the most insignificant things; pain is endowed with the same power to…

— Marcel Proust

A sort of egotistical self-evaluation is unavoidable in those joys in which erudition and art mingle and in which aesthetic pleasure may…

— Marcel Proust

“Nature scarcely seems capable of giving us any but quite short illnesses. But medicine has developed the art of prolonging them.”

— Marcel Proust

Only imagination and belief can differentiate from the rest certain objects, certain people, and can create an atmosphere.

— Marcel Proust