Marcel Proust quote: "It is said that nothing in our lives is ever lost, that nothing can prevent its having been. That is why, so very often the weight of the past lies ineluctably upon the present. But that is why it is so real in memory, so wholly itself, so far beyond replacement."

Everything great in the world comes from neurotics. They alone have founded our religions and compos...
MARCEL PROUST

People who are not in love fail to understand how an intelligent man can suffer because of a very or...
MARCEL PROUST

In a separation it is the one who is not really in loved who says the more tender things.
MARCEL PROUST

The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust.
MARCEL PROUST

There can be no piece of mind in love, since the advantage one has secured is never anything but a f...
MARCEL PROUST

Like everybody who is not in love, he thought one chose the person to be loved after endless deliber...
MARCEL PROUST

Art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artist's metaphysical value-judgments. An ...
MARCEL PROUST

The only thing that does not change is that at any and every time it appears that there have been "g...
MARCEL PROUST

Our memory is like a shop in the window of which is exposed now one, now another photograph of the...
MARCEL PROUST

As the Arab proverb says, The dog barks and the caravan passes. After having dropped this quotation,...
MARCEL PROUST

I was not one man only but the steady advance hour after hour of an army in close formation, in whic...
MARCEL PROUST

Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls b...
MARCEL PROUST

I perceived that to express those impressions, to write that essential book, which is the only true ...
MARCEL PROUST

The fixity of habit is generally in direct proportion to its absurdity.
MARCEL PROUST

Things don't change, but by and by our wishes change.
MARCEL PROUST

Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our sou...
MARCEL PROUST

Remembrance of things past is not necessarily the remembrance of things as they were.
MARCEL PROUST

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.
MARCEL PROUST

My destination is no longer a place, rather a new way of seeing.
MARCEL PROUST

That translucent alabaster of our memories.
MARCEL PROUST

Our memory is like a shop in the window of which is exposed now one, now another photograph of the s...
MARCEL PROUST

We become moral when we are unhappy.
MARCEL PROUST

People have many different kinds of pleasure. The real one is that for which they will forsake the o...
MARCEL PROUST

The moments of the past do not remain still; they retain in our memory the motion which drew them to...
MARCEL PROUST

Our intellect is not the most subtle, the most powerful, the most appropriate, instrument for reveal...
MARCEL PROUST

When the mind has a tendency to dream, it is a mistake to keep dreams away from it, to ration its dr...
MARCEL PROUST

I understood that all the material of a literary work was in my past life, I understood that I had a...
MARCEL PROUST

The bonds that unite another person to our self exist only in our mind.
MARCEL PROUST

Often it is just lack of imagination that keeps a man from suffering very much.
MARCEL PROUST

A powerful idea communicates some of its strength to him who challenges it.
MARCEL PROUST

For each illness that doctors cure with medicine, they provoke ten in healthy people by inoculating ...
MARCEL PROUST

The mistakes made by doctors are innumerable. They err habitually on the side of optimism as to trea...
MARCEL PROUST

The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeing new landscapes, but in having new eyes, in ...
MARCEL PROUST

There's nothing like desire to prevent the things one says from having any resemblance to the things...
MARCEL PROUST

We do not succeed in changing things according to our desire, but gradually our desire changes.
MARCEL PROUST

Impelled by a state of mind which is destined not to last, we make our irrevocable decisions.
MARCEL PROUST

All our final decisions are made in a state of mind that is not going to last.
MARCEL PROUST

Time passes, and little by little everything that we have spoken in falsehood becomes true.
MARCEL PROUST

Lies are essential to humanity. They are perhaps as important as the pursuit of pleasure and moreove...
MARCEL PROUST

The features of our face are hardly more than gestures which force of habit made permanent. Nature, ...
MARCEL PROUST

A cathedral, a wave of storm, a dancer's leap, never turn out to be as high as we had hoped.
MARCEL PROUST

The regularity of a habit is generally in proportion to its absurdity.
MARCEL PROUST

Everything we think of as great has come to us from neurotics. It is they and they alone who found r...
MARCEL PROUST

It is always during a passing state of mind that we make lasting resolutions.
MARCEL PROUST

The time which we have at our disposal every day is elastic; the passions we feel expand it, those t...
MARCEL PROUST

The human plagiarism which is most difficult to avoid, for individuals... is the plagiarism of ourse...
MARCEL PROUST

The paradoxes of today are the prejudices of tomorrow, since the most benighted and the most deplora...
MARCEL PROUST

A change in the weather is sufficient to recreate the world and ourselves.
MARCEL PROUST

The sensitiveness claimed by neurotic is matched by their egotism: they cannot abide the flaunting b...
MARCEL PROUST

Neurosis has an absolute genius for malingering. There is no illness which it cannot counterfeit per...
MARCEL PROUST

A woman one loves rarely suffices for all our needs, so we deceive her with another whom we do not l...
MARCEL PROUST

Illness is the doctor to whom we pay most heed; to kindness, to knowledge we make promise only; pain...
MARCEL PROUST

The charms of the passing woman are generally in direct proportion to the swiftness of her passing.
MARCEL PROUST

It is in moments of illness that we are compelled to recognize that we live not alone but chained to...
MARCEL PROUST

People wish to learn to swim and at the same time to keep one foot on the ground.
MARCEL PROUST

There are perhaps no days of our childhood we lived so fully as those we spent with a favorite book.
MARCEL PROUST

There is no man, however wise, who has not at some period of his youth said things, or lived in a wa...
MARCEL PROUST

It is comforting when one has a sorrow to lie in the warmth of one's bed and there, abandoning all e...
MARCEL PROUST

We say that the hour of death cannot be forecast, but when we say this we imagine that hour as place...
MARCEL PROUST

If a little dreaming is dangerous, the cure for it is not to dream less but to dream more, to dream ...
MARCEL PROUST

In his younger days a man dreams of possessing the heart of the woman whom he loves; later, the fee...
MARCEL PROUST

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.
MARCEL PROUST

We are healed of a suffering only by experiencing it in full.
MARCEL PROUST

Illness is the most heeded of doctors: to goodness and wisdom we only make promises; pain we obey
MARCEL PROUST

Desire makes everything blossom; possession makes everything wither and fade.
MARCEL PROUST

Time, which changes people, does not alter the image we have retained of them.
MARCEL PROUST

Three-quarters of the sicknesses of intelligent people come from their intelligence. They need at le...
MARCEL PROUST

We are healed from suffering only by experiencing it to the full.
MARCEL PROUST

The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.
MARCEL PROUST

The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.
MARCEL PROUST

Happiness serves hardly any other purpose than to make unhappiness possible.
MARCEL PROUST

Every reader finds himself. The writer's work is merely a kind of optical instrument that makes ...
MARCEL PROUST

We must never be afraid to go too far, for truth lies beyond.
MARCEL PROUST

What a profound significance small things assume when the woman we love conceals them from us.
MARCEL PROUST

We are able to find everything in our memory, which is like a dispensary or chemical laboratory in w...
MARCEL PROUST

Only through art can we emerge from ourselves and know what another person sees.
MARCEL PROUST

Let us leave pretty women to men devoid of imagination.
MARCEL PROUST

We don't receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take ...
MARCEL PROUST

Love is space and time measured by the heart.
MARCEL PROUST

Love is a reciprocal torture.
MARCEL PROUST

The only paradise is paradise lost.
MARCEL PROUST

Your soul is a dark forest. But the trees are of a particular species, they are genealogical trees.
MARCEL PROUST

But, when nothing subsists of an old past, after the death of people, after the destruction of thing...
MARCEL PROUST

People are not always very tolerant of the tears which they themselves have provoked.
MARCEL PROUST

Let us be grateful to people who make us happy, they are the charming gardeners who make our souls b...
MARCEL PROUST

Happiness is beneficial for the body, but it is grief that develops the powers of the mind.
MARCEL PROUST

There is no man, however wise, who has not at some period of his youth said things, or lived in a w...
MARCEL PROUST

It is always during a passing state of mind that we make lasting resolutions
MARCEL PROUST

Jean's desires, like those of all men in love, were concentrated on the impossible.
MARCEL PROUST

The time at our disposal each day is elastic; the passions we feel dilate it, those that inspire us ...
MARCEL PROUST

Words do not change their meanings so drastically in the course of centuries as, in our minds, names...
MARCEL PROUST

And then, gradually, the memory of her would fade away, I had forgotten the girl of my dream.
MARCEL PROUST

It is a mistake to speak of a bad choice in love, since as soon as a choice exists, it can only be b...
MARCEL PROUST

One of a hostess's duties is to act as procuress.
MARCEL PROUST

The fixity of a habit is generally in direct proportion to its absurdity.
MARCEL PROUST

The charms of a passing woman are usually in direct relation to the speed of her passing.
MARCEL PROUST

Every reader finds himself. The writer's work is merely a kind of optical instrument that makes it p...
MARCEL PROUST

We don't receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for ...
MARCEL PROUST

The only paradise is paradise lost
MARCEL PROUST

Everything great that we know has come from neurotics… never will the world be aware of how much...
MARCEL PROUST

Life is extraordinarily suave and sweet with certain natural, witty, affectionate people who have un...
MARCEL PROUST

No exile at the South Pole or on the summit of Mont Blanc separates us more effectively from others ...
MARCEL PROUST

A work of art that contains theories is like an object on which the price tag has been left.
MARCEL PROUST

We feel in one world, we think and name in another. Between the two we can set up a system of refere...
MARCEL PROUST

The one thing more difficult than following a regimen is not imposing it on others.
MARCEL PROUST

Only through art can we get outside of ourselves and know another's view of the universe.
MARCEL PROUST

Let us be grateful to people who make us happy: They are the charming gardeners who make our souls b...
MARCEL PROUST

His hatred of snobs was a derivative of his snobbishness, but made the simpletons (in other words, e...
MARCEL PROUST

It is not because other people are dead that our affection for them grows faint, it is because we ou...
MARCEL PROUST

People do not die for us immediately, but remain bathed in a sort of aura of life which bears no rel...
MARCEL PROUST

People can have many different kinds of pleasure. The real one is that for which they will forsake t...
MARCEL PROUST

In theory one is aware that the earth revolves, but in practice one does not perceive it, the ground...
MARCEL PROUST

Like many intellectuals, he was incapable of saying a simple thing in a simple way.
MARCEL PROUST

Words do not change their meanings so drastically in the course of centuries as, in our minds, names...
MARCEL PROUST

And if Francoise then, inspired like a poet with a flood of confused reflections upon bereavement, g...
MARCEL PROUST

My aunt must have been perfectly well aware that she would not see Swann again, that she would never...
MARCEL PROUST

the comfort of reclusion, the poetry of hibernation
MARCEL PROUST

This was to say, however, that she did not long, at times, for some even greater variation, that she...
MARCEL PROUST

It is often hard to bear the tears that we ourselves have caused.
MARCEL PROUST

We are healed of a suffering only by experiencing it to the full.
MARCEL PROUST

Always try to keep a patch of sky above your life.
MARCEL PROUST

Quartering the topmost branches of one of the tall trees, an invisible bird was striving to make the...
MARCEL PROUST

We have such numerous interests in our lives that it is not uncommon, on a single occasion, for the ...
MARCEL PROUST

A fashionable milieu is one in which everybody's opinion is made up of the opinion of all the ot...
MARCEL PROUST

Let us leave pretty women to men with no imagination.
MARCEL PROUST

Love is a striking example of how little reality means to us.
MARCEL PROUST

Thanks to art, instead of seeing one world only, our own, we see that world multiply itself and we h...
MARCEL PROUST

Every reader, as he reads, is actually the reader of himself. The writer's work is only a kind of op...
MARCEL PROUST

For although we know that the years pass, that youth gives way to old age, that fortunes and thrones...
MARCEL PROUST

So few are the easy victories as the ultimate failures.
MARCEL PROUST

People do not die for us immediately, but remain bathed in a sort of aura of
life which bears n...
MARCEL PROUST

We are delighted when a Minister awards us a decoration, even when we have no claim to be thus honou...
MARCEL PROUST

...the salient feature of the absurd age I was at--an age which for all its alleged awkwardness, is ...
MARCEL PROUST

Illness is the doctor to whom we pay most heed; to kindness, to knowledge, we make promise only; pai...
MARCEL PROUST

Now there is one thing I can tell you: you will enjoy certain pleasures you would not fathom now. Wh...
MARCEL PROUST

Only through art can we emerge from ourselves and know what another person sees
MARCEL PROUST

The ''sensitiveness'' claimed by neurotic is matched by their egotism: they cannot abide the flaunti...
MARCEL PROUST

A cathedral, a wave of a storm, a dancer's leap, never turn out to be as high as we had hoped
MARCEL PROUST

Those whose suffering is due to love are, as we say of certain invalids, their own physicians
MARCEL PROUST

Everything great that we know has come from neurotics. never will the world be aware of how much it ...
MARCEL PROUST

The features of our face are hardly more than gestures which have become permanent
MARCEL PROUST

As long as men are free to ask what they must, free to say what they think, free to think what they ...
MARCEL PROUST

It smells all right; it makes your head go round; it catches your breath; you feel ticklish all over...
MARCEL PROUST

I cannot express the uneasiness caused in me by this intrusion of mystery and beauty into a room I h...
MARCEL PROUST

... whose inferiority proclaimed her own supremacy so loud...
MARCEL PROUST

... I felt that I was not penetrating to the full depth of my impression, that something more lay be...
MARCEL PROUST

Unkindness is inspired by hatred, anger fuels it into action in which there is no great joy; it woul...
MARCEL PROUST

The true paradises are the paradises that we have lost.
MARCEL PROUST

The real voyage of discovery consists not in making new landscapes but in having new eyes.
MARCEL PROUST

And at once I fell in love with her, for if it is sometimes enough to make us love a woman that she ...
MARCEL PROUST

It may well have been, too, that the smiling moderation with which she faced and answered these blas...
MARCEL PROUST

All these things and, still more than these, the treasures which had come to the church from persona...
MARCEL PROUST

We do not receive wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness ...
MARCEL PROUST

It is not because other people are dead that our affection for them grows faint, it is because we ou...
MARCEL PROUST

It is seldom indeed that one parts on good terms, because if one were on good terms, one would not p...
MARCEL PROUST

Happiness is beneficial for the body, but it is grief that develops the powers of the mind
MARCEL PROUST

In a separation it is the one who is not really in love who says the more tender things.
MARCEL PROUST

The true paradises are the lost paradises.
MARCEL PROUST

We are healed of a suffering only by expressing it to the full.
MARCEL PROUST

Time, which changes people, does not alter the image we have retained of them
MARCEL PROUST

If only for the sake of elegance, I try to remain morally pure.
MARCEL PROUST

We don't receive wisdom; We must discover it.
MARCEL PROUST

Our intonations contain our philosophy of life, what each of us is constantly telling himself about ...
MARCEL PROUST

Like many intellectuals, he was incapable of saying a simple thing in a simple way
MARCEL PROUST

All the products of one period have something in common; the artists who illustrate the poetry of th...
MARCEL PROUST

She poured out Swann's tea, inquired "Lemon or cream?" and, on his answering "Cream, please," said t...
MARCEL PROUST

The whole art of living is to use the people who make us suffer simply as steps enabling us to obtai...
MARCEL PROUST

Then from those profound slumbers we awake in a dawn, not knowing who we are, being nobody, newly bo...
MARCEL PROUST

The inertia of the mind urges it to slide down the easy slope of imagination, rather than to climb t...
MARCEL PROUST

Sometimes, as Eve was born from one of Adam’s ribs, a woman was born during my sleep from a crampe...
MARCEL PROUST

I loved her [Gilberte]; I was sorry not to have had the time and the inspiration to insult her, to h...
MARCEL PROUST

If a little dreaming is dangerous, the cure for it is not to dream less, but to dream more, to dream...
MARCEL PROUST

Every person is destroyed when we cease to see him; after which his next appearance is a new creatio...
MARCEL PROUST

I feel that there is much to be said for the Celtic belief that the souls of those whom we have lost...
MARCEL PROUST

I did not wait to hear the end of my father's story, for I had been with him myself after mass when ...
MARCEL PROUST

In theory one is aware that the earth revolves, but in practice one does not perceive it, the ground...
MARCEL PROUST

I put down my cup and examine my own mind. It is for it to discover the truth. But how? What an abys...
MARCEL PROUST

Now my uncle knew many of them [actresses] personally, and also ladies of another class, not clearly...
MARCEL PROUST

She observed the dumb-show by which her neighbour was expressing her passion for music, but she refr...
MARCEL PROUST

We don't receive wisdom we must discover it for ourselves.
MARCEL PROUST

Most of our faculties lie dormant because they can rely upon Habit, which knows what there is to be ...
MARCEL PROUST

The time which we have at our disposal every day is elastic; the passions that we feel expand it, th...
MARCEL PROUST

Those whose suffering is due to love are, as we say of certain invalids, their own physicians.
MARCEL PROUST

As soon as one is unhappy one becomes moral
MARCEL PROUST

We do not succeed in changing things according to our desire, but gradually our desire changes. The ...
MARCEL PROUST

In reality, in love there is a permanent suffering which joy neutralizes, renders virtual, delays, b...
MARCEL PROUST

Habit is a second nature which prevents us from knowing the first, of which it has neither the cruel...
MARCEL PROUST

The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes
MARCEL PROUST

In his younger days a man dreams of possessing the heart of the woman whom he loves; later, the feel...
MARCEL PROUST

It is often hard to bear the tears that we ourselves have caused
MARCEL PROUST

It was fortunate that I had not already yielded to the temptation to break with Albertine; the tediu...
MARCEL PROUST

It was not only Odette's indifference, however, that he must take pains to circumvent; it was also, ...
MARCEL PROUST

Perhaps she would not have thought of wickedness as a state so rare, so abnormal, so exotic, one whi...
MARCEL PROUST

[T]his jealousy gave him, if anything, an agreeable chill, as, to the sad Parisian who is leaving Ve...
MARCEL PROUST

My mother repressed a shudder of apprehension, for, being more rapid in perception than my father, s...
MARCEL PROUST

These dreams reminded me that, since I wished some day to become a writer, it was high time to decid...
MARCEL PROUST

The thirst for something other than what we have…to bring something new, even if it is worse, some...
MARCEL PROUST

It was in the defects that they [servants] invariably acquired that I learned of my own natural, inv...
MARCEL PROUST

Es mejor soñar una vida que vivirla, aunque vivirla siga siendo soñarla, pero menos misteriosament...
MARCEL PROUST

Para estar al borde del mar no hay más que cerrar los ojos.
MARCEL PROUST

It is said that nothing in our lives is ever lost, that nothing can prevent its having been. That is why, so very often the weight of the past lies ineluctably upon the present. But that is why it is so real in memory, so wholly itself, so far beyond replacement.

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Marcel Proust

It is said that nothing in our lives is ever lost, that nothing can prevent its having been. That is why, so very often the weight of the past lies ineluctably upon the present. But that is why it is so real in memory, so wholly itself, so far beyond replacement.

Marcel Proust

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