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Marcel Proust

Marcel Proust Quotes

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Famous Marcel Proust Quotes

“Conversation, which is friendship's mode of expression, is a superficial digression which gives us nothing worth acquiring. We may talk for a lifetime without doing more than indefinitely repeat the vacuity of a minute.”

GivingMayMinutesExpressionConversationLifetimeRepeatsSuperficialVacuity
Book:In Search of Lost Time, Volume II: Within a Budding Grove (A Modern Library E-Book)
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“The artist who gives up an hour of work for an hour of conversation with a friend knows that he is sacrificing a reality for something that does not exist (our friends being friends only in the light of an agreeable folly which travels with us through life and to which we readily accommodate ourselves, but which at the bottom of our hearts we know to be no more reasonable than the delusion of the man who talks to the furniture because he believes that it is alive.).”

KnowsMenGivingBelieveHeartDoeRealityLightArtistHoursAliveSacrificeHe ManConversationGiving UpBottomFollyReasonableDelusionFurnitureAccommodate
Book:The past recaptured
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“For although we know that the years pass, that youth gives way to old age, that fortunes and thrones crumble (even the most solid among them) and that fame is transitory, the manner in which—by means of a sort of snapshot—we take cognisance of this moving universe whirled along by Time, has the contrary effect of immobilising it.”

KnowsWayGivingYearsMeanAgeMovingUniverseEffectsYouthFameFortuneContraryOld AgeThronesTransitorySnapshots
Book:In Search of Lost Time, Volume VI: Time Regained (A Modern Library E-Book)
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“Now the same mystery which often veils from our eyes the reason for a catastrophe envelops just as frequently, when love is in question, the suddenness of certain happy solutions, such as had been brought to me by Gilberte's letter. Happy, or at least seemingly happy, for there are few that can really be happy when we are dealing with a sentiment of such a kind that any satisfaction we can give it does no more, as a rule, than dislodge some pain. And yet sometimes a respite is granted us, and we have for a little while the illusion of being healed.”

GivingKindLittlesDoeSometimesReasonEyePainCertainLove IsMysterySolutionsIllusionLettersSatisfactionGrantedSentimentsCatastropheVeilsHealedRespite
Book:Remembrance of Things Past: Swann's way. Within a budding grove
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“Many years have passed since that night. The wall of the staircase up which I had watched the light of his candle gradually climb was long ago demolished. And in myself, too, many things have perished which I imagined would last for ever, and new ones 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 hard to understand.”

GivingYearsLongHardLightLastsJoyNightWallBirthSorrowClimbsCandleLong AgoGiving BirthStaircasesForeseen
Book:The Senses of Consciousness: Swann's Way in Half
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“And so it is with our own past. It is a labour in vain to attempt to recapture it: all the efforts of our intellect must prove futile. The past is hidden somewhere outside the realm, beyond the reach of intellect, in some material object (in the sensation which that material object will give us) of which we have no inkling. And it depends on chance whether or not we come upon this object before we ourselves must die.”

GivingPastDiesChanceEffortObjectsMaterialsDependsProveIntellectVainRealmsLabourSensations
Book:In Search Of Lost Time Vol 1: Swann's Way
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“For what we suppose to be our love or our jealousy is never a single, continuous and indivisible passion. It is composed of an infinity of successive loves, of different jealousies, each of which is ephemeral, although by their uninterrupted multiplicity they give us the impression of continuity, the illusion of unity.”

GivingDifferentPassionIllusionUnityImpressionInfinityOur LoveContinuityEphemeralMultiplicityIndivisible
Book:Remembrance of Things Past: Swann's Way & Within a Budding Grove
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“To understand a profound thought is to have, at the moment one understands it, a profound thought oneself; and this demands some effort, a genuine descent to the heart of oneself . . . Only desire and love give us the strength to make this effort. The only books that we truly absorb are those we read with real appetite, after having worked hard to get them, so great had been our need of them.”

NeedsGivingHeartBookRealHardMomentsDesireEffortDemandAnd LoveProfoundOneselfGenuineAppetiteDescentProfound Thoughts
Author:Marcel Proust
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“Are not the thoughts of the dying often turned towards the practical, painful, obscure, visceral aspect, towards the "seamy side" of death which is, as it happens, the side that death actually presents to them and forces them to feel, and which far more closely resembles a crushing burden, a difficulty in breathing, a destroying thirst, than the abstract idea to which we are accustomed to give the name of Death?”

GivingFeelsIdeasHappensDeathNamesForceSidesDyingAspectDifficultyPainfulBurdenPracticalsBreathingAbstractCrushDestroyingThirstObscureAccustomedVisceral
Book:In Search Of Lost Time Vol 1: Swann's Way
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“It is comforting when one has a sorrow to lie in the warmth of one's bed and there, abandoning all effort and all resistance, to bury even one's head under the cover, giving one's self up to it completely, moaning like branches in the autumn wind. But there is still a better bed, full of divine odors. It is our sweet, our profound, our impenetrable friendship.”

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Book:Pleasures and days: and other writings
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“Life is extraordinarily suave and sweet with certain natural, witty, affectionate people who have unusual distinction and are capable of every vice, but who make a display of none in public and about whom no one can affirm they have a single one. There is something supple and secret about them. Besides, their perversity gives spice to their most innocent occupations, such as taking a walk in the garden at night.”

PeopleGivingLife IsNightCertainNaturalWalksSecretVirtueSweetCapableGardenVicesWittyInnocentDistinctionOccupationUnusualDisplaySpicesAffectionateSupplePerversitySuave
Book:Pleasures and days: and other writings
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