Home / Quotes / Quote by Marcel Proust

Quote by Marcel Proust

“Knowing does not always allow us to prevent, but at least the things that we know, we hold them, if not in our hands, but at leastin our thoughts where we may dispose of them at our whim, which gives us the illusion of power over them.”

Quote by Marcel Proust

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

You May Also Like

“In a language known to us, we have substituted the opacity of the sounds with the transparence of the ideas. But a language we donot know is a closed place in which the one we love can deceive us, making us, locked outside and convulsed in our impotence, incapable of seeing or preventing anything.”

Knows Love Ideas Language Sound Known Seeing Locked Deceiving Incapable Preventing Impotence

Author:Marcel Proust

“Habit! that skillful but slow arranger, which starts out by letting our spirit suffer for weeks in a temporary state, but that thespirit is after all happy to discover, for without habit and reduced to its own resources, the spirit would be unable to make any lodgings seem habitable.”

States Seems Would Be Spirit Suffering Week Habit Resources Temporary Skillful

Author:Marcel Proust

“It is up to my spirit to find the truth. But how? Grave uncertainty, each time the spirit feels beyond its own comprehension; whenit, the explorer, is altogether to obscure land that it must search and where all its baggage is of no use. To search? That is not all: to create.”

Feels Use Spirit Knowledge Creativity Land Graves Uncertainty Obscure Comprehension Baggage Explorers

Author:Marcel Proust

“Even the simple act that we call "going to visit a person of our acquaintance" is in part an intellectual act. We fill the physical appearance of the person we see with all the notions we have about him, and in the totality of our impressions about him, these notions play the most important role.”

Persons Important Play Simple Roles Society Intellectual Notion Appearance Impression Acquaintance Totality Physical Appearance

Author:Marcel Proust

“... we made much less happy by the kindness of a great writer, which strictly speaking we find only in his books, than we suffer from the hostility of a woman whom we have not chosen for her intelligence, but whom we cannot stop ourselves from loving.”

Love Made Book Suffering Reading Kindness Happy Chosen Hostility Great Writers

Author:Marcel Proust

“Theoretically, we know that the world turns, but in fact we do not notice it, the earth on which we walk does not seem to move andwe live on in peace. This is how it is concerning Time in our lives. And to render its passing perceptible, novelists must... have their readers cross ten, twenty, thirty years in two minutes.”

Knows World Years Doe Two Facts Seems Earth Moving Time Turns Reading Walks Our Lives Minutes Reader Ten Crosses Twenties Passing Passings Novelists Thirty Thirty Years

Author:Marcel Proust

“However, the danger in [socially unbalanced relationships] is that the subjection of the woman temporarily calms the man's jealousy but also renders it more demanding. He ends up making his mistress live like those prisoners on whom light is shone day and night in order for them to be better watched. And things always end in tragedy.”

Men Ends Light Night Order Class Danger One Day Tragedy Calm Prisoner Mistress Day And Night Subjection Unbalanced

Author:Marcel Proust

“In times like ours, where the growing complexity of life leaves us barely the time to read the newspapers, where the map of Europehas endured profound rearrangements and is perhaps on the brink of enduring yet others, where so many threatening and new problems appear everywhere, you will admit it may be demanded of a writer that he be more than a fine wit who makes us forget in idle and byzantine discussions on the merits of pure form.”

May Art Problem Form Artist Forget Growing Fine Pure Profound Endure Wit Newspapers Discussion Merit Complexity Maps Idle Threatening Byzantine

Author:Marcel Proust

“... But all the feelings that evoke in us the joy or the misfortune of a real person are only produced in us through the intermediary of an image of that joy or that misfortune; the ingeniousness of the first novelist was in understanding that, in the apparatus of our emotions, since the image is the only essential element, the simplification which consists of purely and simply suppressing the factual characters is a definitive improvement.”

Firsts Persons Real Character Feelings Joy Understanding Emotion Fiction Essentials Elements Improvement Novelists Misfortunes Evoke Factual Real Person Simplification Suppressing

Author:Marcel Proust

“I blame the newspapers because every day they call our attention to insignificant things, while three or four times in our lives,we read books that contain essential things. Once we feverishly tear the band of paper enclosing our newspapers, things should change and we should find--I do not know--the Pensées by Pascal!”

Knows Should Book Three Attention Knowledge Four Our Lives Tears Band Essentials Paper News Blame Newspapers Pens Insignificant Pascal Insignificant Things

Author:Marcel Proust