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
“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
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
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
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
“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
“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
“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
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
“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
“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
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
“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
“...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
“...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
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
Life is extraordinarily suave and sweet with certain natural, witty, affectionate people who have unusual distinction and are capable of every vice,… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
We say that we often see animals in our dreams, but we forget that almost always we are ourselves animals therein, deprived… — 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
“The idea that one will die is more painful than dying, but less painful than the idea that another person is dead,… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
“This compulsion to an activity without respite, without variety, without result was so cruel that one day, noticing a swelling over his… — 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
“...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
“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
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
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
“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
“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
There is no man, however wise, who has not at some period of his youth said things, or lived in a way… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
So we don't believe that life is beautiful because we don't recall it but if we get a whiff of a long-forgotten… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
We have such numerous interests in our lives that it is not uncommon, on a single occasion, for the foundations of a… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
“But even with respect to the most insignificant things in life, none of us constitutes a material whole, identical for everyone, which… — 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
“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
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
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 construct our lives for one person, and when at length it is ready to receive her that person does not come;… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
“His life and family circle changed considerably between 1900 and 1905. In February 1903, Proust's brother Robert married and left the family… — 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
A man may have spent his life among the great ones of the earth, who to him have been merely boring relatives… — 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
