Our intonations contain our philosophy of life, what each of us is constantly telling himself about things. — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
“The facts of life do not penetrate to the sphere in which our beliefs are cherished; as it was not they that… — 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
“Proust's life changed due to a very large inheritance he received (in today's terms, a principal of about $6 million, with a… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
“To think that I have wasted years of my life, that I have longed for death, that the greatest love that I… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
“People who learn some correct detail about another person's life at once draw conclusions from it which are not accurate, and see… — 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
“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
“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
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
“I lost all sense of the place in which I had gone to sleep, and when I awoke at midnight, not knowing… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
“And so we ought not to fear in love, as in everyday life, the future alone, but even the past, which often… — 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
“Sweet Sunday afternoons, beneath the chestnut-tree in our Combray garden, from which I was careful to eliminate every commonplace incident of my… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
This labour of the artist to discover a means of apprehending beneath matter and experience, beneath words, something different from their appearance,… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
At a certain age, we have already been struck by love; it no longer develops alone, according to its own mysteries and… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
“but they knew, either instinctively or from experience, that our impulsive emotions have but little influence over the course of our actions… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
“There are in our life any number of women whom we have never wished to see again, and who have quite naturally… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
“At this time of life one has already been wounded more than once by the darts of love; it no longer evolves… — 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
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 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
“That our words are, as a general rule, filled by the people to whom we address them with a meaning which those… — 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… — 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
“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
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
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
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
“...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
“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
“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
“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
“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
“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
