Memory Quotes by Marcel Proust

Remembrance of things past is not necessarily the remembrance of things as they were.

— Marcel Proust

...the memory of a particular image is but regret for a particular moment..

— Marcel Proust

Memory nourishes the heart, and grief abates.

— Marcel Proust

“For with the perturbations of memory are linked the intermittencies of the heart.”

— Marcel Proust

That translucent alabaster of our memories.

— Marcel Proust

“could still believe in their possible presence; for memory was now set in motion;”

— Marcel Proust

We can only be faithful to what we remember, and we remember only what we have known.

— Marcel Proust

Even though our lives wander, our memories remain in one place.

— Marcel Proust

“The being that I shall be after death has no more reason to remember the man I have been since my birth…

— Marcel Proust

“...but the loss of a memory, like the omission of a phrase during reading, rather than making for uncertainty, can lead to…

— Marcel Proust

How paradoxical it is to search reality for the pictures that are stored in one's memory.

— Marcel Proust

“And then, gradually, the memory of her would fade away, I had forgotten the girl of my dream.”

— Marcel Proust

“And like an aviator who rolls painfully along the ground until, abruptly, he breaks away from it, I felt myself being slowly…

— Marcel Proust

The moments of the past do not remain still; they retain in our memory the motion which drew them towards the future,…

— Marcel Proust

“It is said that nothing in our lives is ever lost, that nothing can prevent its having been. That is why, so…

— Marcel Proust

The images selected by memory are as arbitrary, as narrow, as elusive as those which the imagination had formed and reality has…

— Marcel Proust

There is no man, however wise, who has not at some period of his youth said things, or lived in a way…

— Marcel Proust

“There is no one, no matter how wise he is, who has not in his youth said things or done things that…

— Marcel Proust

“Every person is destroyed when we cease to see him; after which his next appearance is a new creation, different from that…

— Marcel Proust

“madeleine soaked in her decoction of lime-flowers which my aunt used to give me (although I did not yet know and must…

— Marcel Proust

Our memory is like a shop in the window of which is exposed now one, now another photograph of the same person.…

— 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

“Suddenly the memory of his wife came back to him and, no doubt feeling it would be too complicated to try to…

— Marcel Proust

“The idea that one will die is more painful than dying, but less painful than the idea that another person is dead,…

— Marcel Proust

“This was many years ago. The staircase wall on which I saw the rising glimmer of his candle has long since ceased…

— Marcel Proust

“The places we have known do not belong only to the world of space on which we map them for our own…

— Marcel Proust

“The reality that I had known no longer existed. The places that we have known belong now only to the little world…

— Marcel Proust

“The truth, even more, is that life is perpetually weaving fresh threads which link one individual and one event to another, and…

— Marcel Proust

But when from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, taste and…

— Marcel Proust

“[T]his jealousy gave him, if anything, an agreeable chill, as, to the sad Parisian who is leaving Venice behind him to return…

— Marcel Proust

“Each of our actions, our words, our attitudes is cut off from the ‘world,’ from the people who have not directly perceived…

— 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

“I feel that there is much to be said for the Celtic belief that the souls of those whom we have lost…

— Marcel Proust

“What best remind us of a person is precisely what we had forgotten (because it was of no importance, and we therefore…

— Marcel Proust

“When nothing else subsists from the past, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered...the smell and taste…

— Marcel Proust

We are able to find everything in our memory, which is like a dispensary or chemical laboratory in which chance steers our…

— Marcel Proust

“The resurrection at our awakening-after that beneficent attack of mental alienation which is sleep-must after all be similar to what occurs when…

— Marcel Proust

After a certain age our memories are so intertwined with one another that what we are thinking of, the book we are…

— Marcel Proust

“But, when nothing subsists of an old past, after the death of people, after the destruction of things, alone, frailer but more…

— Marcel Proust

The places we have known do not belong solely to the world of space in which we situate them for our greater…

— Marcel Proust