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Quote by Marcel Proust

“A man of letters, merely by reading a phrase, can estimate exactly the literary merit of its author.”

Quote by Marcel Proust

Book:Swann's Way

Work

Swann's Way is a seminal work in modernist literature, renowned for its richly detailed portrayal of human emotions and the complexities of social relations. The novel delves into the life of Charles Swann, a wealthy Parisian, and his relationships with various women, including Odette de Crécy and Gilberte Swann. It is characterized by its introspective narrative style and its exploration of the author's own experiences. more

Author

Marcel Proust was a French novelist renowned for his magnum opus, 'In Search of Lost Time'. This novel is considered a classic of 20th-century literature, known for its intricate psychological portrayals and profound exploration of memory. more

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“Each reader reads only what is already within himself. The book is only a sort of optical instrument which the writer offers to the reader to enable the latter to discover in himself what he would not have found but for the aid of the book.”

Book Found Reader Offers Instruments Aids Latter

Book:Remembrance of Things Past

Source: Remembrance of Things Past

“A certain similarity exists, although the type evolves, between all the women we love, a similarity that is due to the fixity of our own temperament, which it is that chooses them, eliminating all those who would not be at once our opposite and our complement, fitted that is to say to gratify our senses and to wring our heart.”

Heart Certain Type Opposites Dues Senses Evolve Temperament Similarity Eliminating Complement

Book:Delphi Complete Works of Marcel Proust (Illustrated)

Source: Delphi Complete Works of Marcel Proust (Illustrated)

“A person does not...stand motionless and clear before our eyes with his merits, his defects, his plans, his intentions with regard to ourself exposed on his surface...but is a shadow which we can never succeed in penetrating...a shadow behind which we can alternately imagine, with equal justification, that there burns the flame of hatred and of love.”

Persons Doe Eye Behinds Clear Imagine Plans Succeed Equal Shadow Hatred Regard Intention Surface Flames Merit Exposed Justification Defects

Author:Marcel Proust

“The heart changes...but we learn of it only from reading or by imagination; for in reality its alteration, like that of certain natural phenomena, is so gradual that, even if we are able to distinguish, successively, each of its different states, we are still spared the actual sensation of change.”

Ifs Heart Stills Different States Reality Able Certain Reading Imagination Natural Sensations Alterations Natural Phenomena

Author:Marcel Proust

“The opinions which we hold of one another, our relations with friends and kinsfolk are in no sense permanent, save in appearance, but are as eternally fluid as the sea itself.”

Opinion Sea Relation Appearance Permanent Fluid Kinfolk

Book:Delphi Complete Works of Marcel Proust (Illustrated)

Source: Delphi Complete Works of Marcel Proust (Illustrated)

“We feel in one world, we think and name in another. Between the two we can set up a system of references, but we cannot fill in the gap.”

Thinking World Life Feels Two Names Gaps

Author:Marcel Proust

“No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs touched my palate than a shudder ran through me and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me.”

Happenings Extraordinary Warm Ran Touched Liquid Extraordinary Things Crumbs Palate Madeleines

Book:Swann's Way

Source: Swann's Way

“No days, perhaps, of all our childhood are ever so fully lived as those that we had regarded as not being lived at all: days spent wholly with a favourite book. Everything that seemed to fill them full for others we pushed aside, because it stood between us and the pleasures of the Gods.”

Book Pleasure Childhood Our Children Favourite Favourite Book

Book:Marcel Proust: A Selection from His Miscellaneous Writings

Source: Marcel Proust: A Selection from His Miscellaneous Writings

“The sight of the little madeleine had recalled nothing to my mind before I tasted it...”

Mind Littles Sight Madeleines

Book:Swann's Way

Source: Swann's Way

“Then we understand that rebellion cannot exist without a strange form of love. Those who find no rest in God or in history are condemned to live for those who, like themselves, cannot live; in fact, for the humiliated.”

Facts Form Strange Rebellion Humiliated Forms Of Love

Author:Albert Camus