Marcel ProustThere is no more ridiculous custom than the one that makes you express sympathy once and for all on a given day to a person whose sorrow will endure as long as his life. Such grie… ▶371LifeSadnessTime
Marcel ProustWhat a profound significance small things assume when the woman we love conceals them from us.361Love
Marcel ProustAll our final decisions are made in a state of mind that is not going to last.361PoliticsThought
Marcel ProustA little insomnia is not without its value in making us appreciate sleep, in throwing a ray of light upon that darkness. ✨ Marcel Proust (2013). Delphi Complete Works of Mar… ▶372Truth
Marcel ProustPeople can have many different kinds of pleasure. The real one is that for which they will forsake the others.351Humanity
Marcel ProustThree-quarters of the sicknesses of intelligent people come from their intelligence. They need at least a doctor who can understand this sickness.362Humanity
Marcel ProustOur shadows, now parallel, now close together and joined, traced an exquisite pattern at our feet. ✨ Marcel Proust (1999). The captive & the fugitive341Sadness
Marcel ProustIt is not because other people are dead that our affection for them grows faint, it is because we ourselves are dying. ✨ Marcel Proust (2006). Remembrance of Things Past, p.… ▶352DeathHumanityLove
Marcel ProustIn 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 lo… ▶363Love
Marcel ProustThe soldier is convinced that a certain indefinitely extendable time period is accorded him before he is killed, the burglar before he is caught, men in general, before they must … ▶352DeathLoveTime
Marcel ProustBut to ask pity of our body is like discoursing in front of an octopus, for which our words can have no more meaning than the sound of the tides, and with which we should be appal… ▶341Philosophy
Marcel ProustThe truth is that every morning war is declared afresh. And the men who wish to continue it are as guilty as the men who began it, more guilty perhaps, for the latter perhaps did … ▶374TimeTruth
Marcel ProustA powerful idea communicates some of its strength to him who challenges it. ✨ Marcel Proust (2006). Remembrance of Things Past, p.518, Wordsworth Editions364PoliticsThoughtTime
Marcel ProustPerhaps the pleasure one feels in writing is not the infallible test of the literary value of a page; perhaps it is only a secondary state which is often superadded, but the want … ▶342PoliticsReadingTime
Marcel ProustTo achieve accurate knowledge of others, if such a thing were possible, we could only ever arrive at it through the slow and unsure recognition of our own initial optical inaccura… ▶342ReadingThought
Marcel ProustOur passions shape our books, repose writes them in the intervals. ✨ Marcel Proust (2013). Delphi Complete Works of Marcel Proust (Illustrated), p.4867, Delphi Classics376LoveReading
Marcel ProustNeurosis has an absolute genius for malingering. There is no illness which it cannot counterfeit perfectly. If it is capable of deceiving the doctor, how should it fail to deceive… ▶354Truth
Marcel ProustThose whose suffering is due to love are, as we say of certain invalids, their own physicians. ✨ Marcel Proust (2006). Remembrance of Things Past, p.578, Wordsworth Editions… ▶343LoveTime
Marcel ProustPeople do not die for us immediately, but remain bathed in a sort of aura of life which bears no relation to true immortality but through which they continue to occupy our thought… ▶365DeathHumanityLife
Marcel ProustThe moments of the past do not remain still; they retain in our memory the motion which drew them towards the future, towards a future which has itself become the past, and draw u… ▶365HopeTime
Marcel ProustNine tenths of the ills from which intelligent people suffer spring from their intellect. ✨ Marcel Proust (2016). In Search of Lost Time: Or “Á la Recherche du temps perdu”,… ▶376HumanityTime
Marcel ProustOne becomes moral as soon as one is unhappy. ✨ Marcel Proust (2015). In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower: In Search of Lost Time, p.225, Yale University Press321Time
Marcel ProustAlways try to keep a patch of sky above your life. ✨ Marcel Proust (2016). Swann's Way, p.88, Marcel Proust365Life
Marcel ProustWe believe we can change things according to our wishes because that's the only happy solution we can see. We don't think of what usually happens and what is also a happy solution… ▶321Thought
Marcel ProustLove is an incurable malady like those pathetic states in which rheumatism affords the sufferer a brief respite only to be replaced by epileptiform headaches.332LovePolitics
Marcel ProustWe 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.321Thought
Marcel ProustNo exile at the South Pole or on the summit of Mont Blanc separates us more effectively from others than the practice of a hidden vice. ✨ Marcel Proust (1948). The Maxims of… ▶377Philosophy
Marcel ProustTime passes, and little by little everything that we have spoken in falsehood becomes true. ✨ Marcel Proust (1982). Remembrance of Things Past: The captive. The fugitive. Ti… ▶344TimeTruth
Marcel ProustIf, I can someday see M. Claude Monet's garden, I feel sure that I shall see something that is not so much a garden of flowers as of colours and tones, less an old-fashioned flowe… ▶322Time
Marcel ProustThe only true voyage of discovery, . . . would be not to visit strange lands but to possess other eyes. ✨ Marcel Proust (2006). Remembrance of Things Past, p.657, Wordsworth… ▶333TimeTruth
