Quotes by
Marcel Proust |
1871-1922 , French writer
French novelist, critic, and essayist best known for his monumental novel In Search of Lost Time (À la recherche du temps perdu), published in seven parts between 1913 and 1927. He is considered one of the greatest authors of the 20th century.
| 36 quotes | 5,913 visits |
Quotations
| • | Remembrance of things past is not necessarily the remembrance of things as they were. 21 |
| • | Do not wait for life. Do not long for it. Be aware, always and at every moment, that the miracle is in the here and now. 12 |
| • | Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom. 11 |
| • | Happiness is beneficial for the body, but it is grief that develops the powers of the mind. 11 |
| • | It comes so soon, the moment when there is nothing left to wait for. 10 |
| • | Time, which changes people, does not alter the image we have of them. 8 |
| • | There is no one, no matter how wise he is, who has not in his youth said things or done things that are so unpleasant to recall in later life that he would expunge them entirely from his memory if that were possible. 8 |
| • | In a separation it is the one who is not really in love who says the more tender things. 8 |
| • | The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes. 6 |
| • | All the mind's activity is easy if it is not subjected to reality. 6 |
| • | We don't receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us. 5 |
| • | Love is space and time measured by the heart. 5 |
| • | Let us leave pretty women to men with no imagination. 4 |
| • | Everything great in the world is done by neurotics; they alone founded our religions and created our masterpieces. 4 |
| • | All our final decisions are made in a state of mind that is not going to last. 4 |
| • | Habit is a second nature which prevents us from knowing the first, of which it has neither the cruelties nor the enchantments. 4 |
| • | Love is a striking example of how little reality means to us. 3 |
| • | If a little dreaming is dangerous, the cure for it is not to dream less, but to dream more, to dream all the time 3 |
| • | Like many intellectuals, he was incapable of saying a simple thing in a simple way. 3 |
| • | There are perhaps no days of our childhood we lived so fully as those we believe we left without having lived them, those we spent with a favorite book. 3 |
| • | Nine tenths of the ills from which intelligent people suffer spring from their intellect. 3 |
| • | Just as those who practice the same profession recognize each other instinctively, so do those who practice the same vice. 3 |
| • | We are at times too ready to believe that the present is the only possible state of things. 3 |
| • | Illness is the doctor to whom we pay most heed; to kindness, to knowledge, we make promise only; pain we obey. 3 |
| • | Adultery breathes new life into marriages which have been left for dead. 3 |
| • | The true paradises are the paradises that we have lost. 2 |
| • | My destination is no longer a place, rather a new way of seeing. 2 |
| • | Desire makes everything blossom; possession makes everything wither and fade. 2 |
| • | It is often hard to bear the tears that we ourselves have caused. 2 |
| • | If we are to make reality endurable, we must all nourish a fantasy or two. 2 |
| • | One must never miss an opportunity of quoting things by others which are always more interesting than those one thinks up oneself. 2 |
| • | Your soul is a dark forest. But the trees are of a particular species, they are genealogical trees. 2 |
| • | People wish to learn to swim and at the same time to keep one foot on the ground. 2 |
| • | A work in which there are theories is like an object which still has the ticket that shows its price. 2 |
| • | Love is a reciprocal torture. 2 |
| • | Photography is the product of complete alienation. 2 |
