“A new book was not one of a number of similar objects, but was like an individual man, unmatched, and with no… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
Our desires cut across one another, and in this confused existence it is rare for happiness to coincide with the desire that… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
Even from the simplest, the most realistic point of view, the countries which we long for occupy, at any given moment, a… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
We strive all the time to give our life its form, but we do so by copying willy-nilly, like a drawing, the… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
“Reading is on the threshold of the spiritual life; it can introduce us to it; it does not constitute it.” — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
For, just as in the beginning it is formed by desire, so afterwards love is kept in existence only by painful anxiety. — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
Do not wait for life. Do not long for it. Be aware, always and at every moment, that the miracle is in… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
“Our love of life is only an old liaison of which we do not know how to rid ourselves. Its strength lies… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
“Our slightest desire, though unique as a chord, nevertheless includes the fundamental notes on which the whole of our life is built.… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
Every kiss provokes another. Oh, in those earliest days of love how naturally the kisses spring to life! So closely, in their… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
The character we exhibit in the latter half of our life need not necessarily be, though it often is, our original character,… — 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
“There is no one, no matter how wise he is, who has not in his youth said things or done things that… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
The reason why life may be judged to be trivial although at certain moments it seems to us so beautiful is that… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
I was left alone there in the company of the orchids, roses and violets, which, like people waiting beside you who do… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
“The places we have known do not belong only to the world of space on which we map them for our own… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
“It may be that I might have inferred from the pages that life teaches us to diminish the value of what we… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
There is probably not one person, however great his virtue, who cannot be led by the complexities of life's circumstances to a… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
“Whatever one may say, writing a novel is a very different thing from living one. All the same our lives are not… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
“Then from those profound slumbers we awake in a dawn, not knowing who we are, being nobody, newly born, ready for anything,… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
“The reality that I had known no longer existed. The places that we have known belong now only to the little world… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
“In a recluse, the most irrevocable, lifelong rejection of the world often has as its basis an uncontrolled passion for the crowd,… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
Perhaps it is not-being that is the true state, and all our dream of life is inexistent; but, if so, we feel… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
“There is, following an ample meal, a sort of pause in time, filled with a gentle slackening of thought and energy, when… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
“Composers do not remember this lost fatherland, but each of them remains all his life unconsciously attuned to it; he is delirious… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
“For every death is for others a simplification of life, it spares them the necessity of showing gratitude, the obligation of paying… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
“Our desires interweave with one another; and in the confusion of existence, it is seldom that a joy is promptly paired with… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
“True life life at last discovered and illuminated the only life therefore really lived that life is literature.” — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
“recalling our life in the old days at Combray with my great-aunt, at Balbec, Paris, Doncières, Venice, and the rest;” — 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
“But in exchange for what our imagination leads us to expect and we give ourselves so much futile trouble trying to find,… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
The only true voyage of discovery, . . . would be not to visit strange lands but to possess other eyes. — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
“In short, my aunt demanded that whoever came to see her must at one and the same time approve of her way… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
“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
“Were it not for habit, life would seem delightful to beings constantly under threat of dying, in other words to all humankind.” — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
“An impression of love is out of proportion to the other impressions of life, but when it is lost in their midst… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
We feel in one world, we think and name in another. Between the two we can set up a system of references,… — 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
