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Marcel Proust quotes

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“To determine not to think of it was but to think of it still, to suffer from it still.” Marcel Proust, Swann's Way
“A little tap at the window, as though some missile had struck it, followed by a plentiful, falling sound, as light, though, as if a shower of sand were being sprinkled from a window overhead; then the fall spread, took on an order, a rhythm,...” Marcel Proust, Swann's Way
“The anaesthetic effect of custom being destroyed, I would begin to think and to feel very melancholy things.” Marcel Proust, Swann's Way
“our social personality is created by the thoughts of other people.” Marcel Proust, Swann's Way
“in my cowardice I became at once a man, and did what all we grown men do when face to face with suffering and injustice; I preferred not to see them” Marcel Proust, Swann's Way
“People don't know when they are happy. They're never so unhappy as they think they are.” Marcel Proust, Swann's Way
“Our hands do not tremble except for ourselves, or for those whom we love.” Marcel Proust, Swann's Way
“The fault I find with our journalism is that it forces us to take an interest in some fresh triviality or other every day, whereas only three or four books in a lifetime give us anything that is of real importance.” Marcel Proust, Swann's Way
“Bodily passion, which has been so unjustly decried, compels its victims to display every vestige that is in them of unselfishness and generosity, and so effectively that they shine resplendent in the eyes of all beholders.” Marcel Proust, Swann's Way
“One felt that in her renunciation of life she had willingly abandoned those places in which she would at least have been able to see him whom she loved, for others where he had never trod.” Marcel Proust, Swann's Way
“If we are to make reality endurable, we must all nourish a fancy or two.” Marcel Proust, In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower
“In his younger days a man dreams of possessing the heart of the woman whom he loves; later, the feeling that he possesses the heart of a woman may be enough to make him fall in love with her.” Marcel Proust, Swann's Way
“Ah, in those earliest days of love how naturally the kisses spring into life. How closely, in their abundance, are they pressed one against another; until lovers would find it as hard to count the kisses exchanged in an hour, as to count the...” Marcel Proust, Swann's Way
“Always try to keep a patch of sky above your life” Marcel Proust, Swann's Way
“With a woman who does not love us, as with someone who has died, the knowledge that there is nothing left to hope for does not prevent us from going on waiting.” Marcel Proust, In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower
“And in myself, too, many things have perished which, I imagined, would last for ever, and new structures have arisen, giving birth to new sorrows and new joys which in those days I could not have foreseen, just as now the old are difficult of...” Marcel Proust, Swann's Way
“beauty is the promise of happiness.” Marcel Proust, The Prisoner
“For a long time I used to go to bed early.” Marcel Proust, Swann's Way
“But when from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, still, alone, more fragile, but with more vitality, more unsubstantial, more persistent, more faithful, the smell and taste...” Marcel Proust, Swann's Way
“it is only with the passions of others that we are ever really familiar, and what we come to find out about our own can be no more than what other people have shewn us.” Marcel Proust, Swann's Way
“Perhaps the immobility of the things that surround us is forced upon them by our conviction that they are themselves, and not anything else, and by the immobility of our conceptions of them.” Marcel Proust, Swann's Way
“She belonged to that one of the two divisions of the human race in which the untiring curiosity which the other half feels about the people whom it does not know is replaced by an unfailing interest in the people whom it does.” Marcel Proust, Swann's Way
“She can't have understood you: you are so utterly different from ordinary men. That's what I liked about you when I first saw you; I felt at once that you weren't like everybody else.” Marcel Proust, Swann's Way
“the fact that the intellect is not the most subtle, powerful and appropriate instrument for grasping the truth is only one more reason in favour of starting with the intellect rather than with the intuitions of the unconscious or with...” Marcel Proust, The Fugitive
“Swann had learned by experience that the good intentions of a third party are powerless to control a woman who is annoyed to find herself pursued even into a ball-room by a man whom she does not love. Too often, the kind friend comes down again...” Marcel Proust, Swann's Way
“Our memories and our hearts are not large enough to remain faithful. We have not room enough, in our present mental space, to keep the dead alongside the living.” Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way
“To such an extent does passion manifest itself in us as a temporary and distinct character, which not only takes the place of our normal character but actually obliterates the signs by which that character has hitherto been discernible.” Marcel Proust, Swann's Way
“But the harshness of his steely glare was compensated by the softness of his cotton gloves, so effectively that, as he approached Swann, he seemed to be exhibiting at once an utter contempt for his person and the most tender regard for his hat.” Marcel Proust, Swann's Way
“The interval of space separating her from him was one which he must as inevitably traverse as he must descend, by an irresistible gravitation, the steep slope of life itself.” Marcel Proust, Swann's Way
“But the presence of Odette continued to sow in Swann's heart alternate seeds of love and suspicion.” Marcel Proust, Swann's Way
“Her eyes were fine, but so large that they seemed to be bending beneath their own weight, strained the rest of her face and always made her appear unwell or in an ill humour.” Marcel Proust, Swann's Way
“Anxiously he explored every one of these vaguely seen shapes, as though among the phantoms of the dead, in the realms of darkness, he had been searching for a lost Eurydice.” Marcel Proust, Swann's Way
“In short, my aunt stipulated, at one and the same time, that whoever came to see her must approve of her way of life, commiserate with her in her sufferings, and assure her of an ultimate recovery.” Marcel Proust, Swann's Way
“it is always easy to put together stories about a past which nobody any longer remembers, like those about journeys to countries where nobody has ever been.” Marcel Proust, Finding Time Again
“It's so dreadful to think that in every trivial little thing you do some one may be overlooking you. ” Marcel Proust, Swann's Way
“in order to discover that we are in love, even perhaps in order to fall in love, the day of separation needs to arrive.” Marcel Proust, The Fugitive
“one should never argue about plays or novels. Everyone has his own way of looking at things, and what may be horrible to you is, perhaps, just what I like best.” Marcel Proust, Swann's Way
“The idea that we shall die is more cruel than dying itself, but less cruel than the idea that someone else is dead” Marcel Proust, The Fugitive
“He was one of that class of men who, apart from a scientific career in which they may well have proved brilliantly successful, have acquired an entirely different kind of culture, literary or artistic, of which they make no use in the specialised...” Marcel Proust, Swann's Way

Related topics

love memory suffering passion others heart happiness self change science injustice conversation separation taste intuition life music thinking truth freedom

Related sources

Swann's Way (31)
The Fugitive (3)
In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower (2)
Finding Time Again (1)
The Guermantes Way (1)
The Prisoner (1)