People can have many different kinds of pleasure. The real one is that for which they will forsake the others. — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
She poured out Swann's tea, inquired "Lemon or cream?" and, on his answering "Cream, please," said to him with a laugh: "A… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
“Among all the modes by which love is brought into being, among all the agents which disseminate that blessed bane, there are… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
Perhaps the pleasure one feels in writing is not the infallible test of the literary value of a page; perhaps it is… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
Pleasures are like photographs: in the presence of the person we love, we take only negatives, which we develop later, at home,… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
At that time, he was satisfying a sensual curiosity by experiencing the pleasures of people who live for love. He had believed… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
“The glutton usually realizes that gout is ever ready to pounce, and that alcohol is bad for him. But possible disaster weighs… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
The truth is that men can have several sorts of pleasure. The true pleasure is the one for which they abandon the… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
“Sadists of Mlle Vinteuil's sort are creatures so purely sentimental, so naturally virtuous, that even sensual pleasure appears to them as something… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
“Unkindness is inspired by hatred, anger fuels it into action in which there is no great joy; it would take sadism to… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
Lies are essential to humanity. They are perhaps as important as the pursuit of pleasure and moreover are dictated by that pursuit. — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
No days, perhaps, of all our childhood are ever so fully lived as those that we had regarded as not being lived… — 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
“It was not evil that gave her the idea of pleasure, that seemed to her attractive; it was pleasure, rather, that seemed… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
It has been said that beauty is a promise of happiness. Conversely, the possibility of pleasure can be a beginning of beauty. — 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 Image
“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 Image
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 Image
The bonds that unite another person to our self exist only in our mind. — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
...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 Image
“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 Image
“Art extracted from the most familiar reality does indeed exist and its domain is perhaps the largest of any.” — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
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 Image
“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 Image
“We betroth ourselves by proxy, and then feel obliged to marry the intermediary.” — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
“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 Image