Perhaps she would not have thought of wickedness as a state so rare, so abnormal, so exotic, one which it was so refreshing to visit, had she been able to distinguish in herself, as in all her fellow-men and women, that indifference to the sufferings which they cause which, whatever names else be given it, is the one true, terrible and lasting form of cruelty.
Marcel Proust
Related She had not thought it would be so easy to slip into the old roles. Cambridge had changed her fundam... IAN MCEWAN Terrible thought she was brave. She remembered it now, heard his voice in her head as if he stood ne... STACIA KANE Here is one fact 1 minute to finish the class, 1 day to die, one day behind that fact, one day in th... DEYTH BANGER But Lucy had been alone too much of her life, and in her loneliness she had constructed a vision of ... ANN PATCHETT What made more sense was that the bargain she was bound to was to go on living as she had been doing... ALICE MUNRO And she looked upon the mirror that was given as a gift. She hated everything about it, from the cir... ANTHONY LICCIONE But the lies which Odette ordinarily told were less innocent, and served to prevent discoveries whic... MARCEL PROUST In fiction, where so much of personality is revealed, the absence of charm is a great lack, ... and ... VIRGINIA WOOLF She observed the dumb-show by which her neighbour was expressing her passion for music, but she refr... MARCEL PROUST She tried to remember all the times she had spoken to him. She replayed every moment she could remem... MAHITA VAS I wrote to you for a year and you never wrote back. T rang you over and over again and you woul... MELINA MARCHETTA I wrote to you for a year and you never wrote back. I rang you over and over again and you would nev... MELINA MARCHETTA Tess's feminine hope - shall we confess it - had been so obstinately recuperative as to revive in he... THOMAS HARDY One of the aspects of form that I have been very interested in is stasis - the concept of form which... LA MONTE YOUNG …there would be no powerful will binding hers in that blind persistence with which men and women b... KATE CHOPIN It may well have been, too, that the smiling moderation with which she faced and answered these blas... MARCEL PROUST She wants to prove to herself, her dad and Patrick that she is going to take her life in her hands a... JASON THOMPSON She had lost herself in this old work, her personality dissolving into it, so that she had been set ... IAIN PEARS Whenever she felt like crying, she would instead become angry—at someone else or at herself—whic... HARUKI MURAKAMI Everyday people all over the world take advantage of life, they abuse it and dice with it.Life is so... GARY F EVANS... What was this power, this insidious threat, this invisible gun to her head that controlled her life ... FANNIE FLAGG if it doesn't come bursting out of you in spite of everything, don't do it. unless it... CHARLES BUKOWSKI Men’s economic privilege, their social value, the prestige of marriage, the usefulness of masculin... SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR Of all the properties which belong to honorable men, not one is so highly prized as that of characte... HENRY CLAY It exasperated her to think that the dungeon in which she had languished for so many unhappy years h... GEORGE BERNARD SHAW Anne is so thoroughly indoctrinated that it doesn’t even occur to her to infer that the other side... ROBERT A. HEINLEIN She had been looking all along for a friend, and it took her a while to discover that a lover was no... TONI MORRISON She loved him, even though it was so hard to love anybody else after loving my dad. I think I knew t... MARGARET MCMULLAN When had being an addict gotten so fucking hard? So exhausting? It had been so easy for so long; she... STACIA KANE A woman must continually watch herself. She is almost continually accompanied by her own image of he... JOHN BERGER Once again she would arrive at a foreign place. Once again be the newcomer, an outsider, the one who... LAURA ESQUIVEL Midland City had a goddess of discord all its own. This was a goddess who could not dance, would not... KURT VONNEGUT Anna had been preparing herself for this meeting, had thought what she would say to him, but she did... LEO TOLSTOY It was like they waited to tell each other things that had never been told before. What she had to s... CARSON MCCULLERS Teachers were not allowed to beat children as they did in the past, although, Mma Ramotswe reflected... ALEXANDER MCCALL SMITH Sharp knives seemed to cut her delicate feet, yet she hardly felt them, so deep was the pain in her ... HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN A man is unlikely to be brought within earshot of women as they judge men's appearance, height, musc... NAOMI WOLF ...the routine of life goes on, whatever happens, we do the same things, go through the little perfo... DAPHNE DU MAURIER Before her marriage she had thought that she had love within her grasp; but since the happiness whic... GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Never did she find anything so difficult as to keep herself from losing her temper when she was sudd... FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT And she knew him and so herself, for although she had always known herself she had never been able t... ITALO CALVINO Portia remembered her interview in the small office upstairs...in which she had been so shy, so terr... JEAN HANFF KORELITZ For the first time, she recognized the symptoms of infatuation which she had felt incipiently as a c... KATE CHOPIN Poor things, she thought - do they have to spend all this energy just to surround me? It seemed piti... SHIRLEY JACKSON She was as one who, in madness, was resolute to throw herself from a precipice, but to whom some rem... ANTHONY TROLLOPE What is it that makes you so angry, bothers you so deeply, that you're compelled to act? CRAIG GROESCHEL This instinctive repulsion which tradespeople inspire in men of sensitive feeling is one of the very... LOUIS-FERDINAND CELINE Yet it seemed to Bega that if she could continue to read, which had come so easily to her... then th... MELVYNN BRAGG I don't know what to say, so far... there is some evidence which say that "Reincarnation", exist, bu... DEYTH BANGER It is not women's fault if we are so tender. It is in the nature of the lives we live. And further, ... SELMA JAMES I know a person who, though no poet, composed some verses in a very short time, which were full of f... TERESA OF ÁVILA Alex understood such discipline. He knew the rarity of it, and the cost. And on the rare occasions w... MEREDITH DURAN She smiled. She knew she was dying. But it did not matter any longer. She had known something which ... AYN RAND The contents of this letter threw Elizabeth into a flutter of spirits in which it was difficult to d... JANE AUSTEN Her only thought was of getting away, as if she were carrying a live grenade from inside the house, ... JENNIFER EGAN Before she realized he was next to her, he had placed his hands over hers on the countertop, then ho... ALICE HOFFMAN My aunt must have been perfectly well aware that she would not see Swann again, that she would never... MARCEL PROUST It appeared to Harriet that she was always the one who remembered having seen other people. They nev... ELIZABETH TAYLOR Marie Curie is my hero. Few people have accomplished something so rare - changing science. And as ha... ALAN ALDA The girl had a certain nobleness of imagination, which rendered her a good many services and played ... HENRY JAMES I've always resented Hermione, because I wanted to be her so badly and she never seemed to appreciat... RACHEL COHN Elza needed challenges in her life, needed to be occupied. Without walls to climb or windmills to at... MARC FITTEN Elza needed challenges in her life, needed to be occupied. Without walls to climb or windmills to at... MARK FITTER I was sorry for her; I was amazed, disgusted at her heartless vanity; I wondered why so much beauty ... ANNE BRONTë Nature herself was proud of his designs,
And joyed to wear the dressing of his lines!
Which we... BEN JONSON Sissy had two great failings. She was a great lover and a great mother. She had so much of tendernes... BETTY SMITH Sometimes she went so far as to wish that she should find herself in a difficult position, so that s... HENRY JAMES She could not picture it. Herself riding on the subway or streetcar, caring for new horses, talking ... ALICE MUNRO I want to weep , she thought. I want to be comforted. I’m so tired of being strong. I wan... GEORGE R.R. MARTIN Alma had grown as tall as a man by now, with broad shoulders. ... This need not have necessarily pre... ELIZABETH GILBERT One day, on tearing off some old bark, I saw two rare beetles, and seized one in each hand. Then I s... CHARLES DARWIN Tears streamed down her wrinkled face. This world that she had longed to change for the better was a... GARY INBINDER The trouble with Grace, she thought, is that she is so literal. But that was the trouble with most p... ALEXANDER MCCALL SMITH Genuine and true love is so rare that when you encounter it in any form, it's a wonderful thing,... GWENDOLINE CHRISTIE There had been no enemies, just one single adversary, herself; her future had been killed by her own... GIUSEPPE TOMASI DI LAMPEDUSA Miriam wished for so much in those final moments. Yet as she closed her eyes, it was not regret any ... KHALED HOSSEINI I believe that the purpose for which I and my fellow soldiers entered upon this war should have been... SIEGFRIED SASSOON She wasn’t afraid of difficulties; what frightened her was being forced to choose one particular p... PAULO COELHO They didn't pressure us as much as I thought they would which was a surprise. So we were able to hol... MATT LINDER Florence could feel a constriction in her chest…She had been foolish enough to hope that whatever ... SANA KRASIKOV Florence could feel a constriction in her chest…She had been foolish enough to hope that whatever ... SANA KRASIKOV That's what got her, of course. That everyone thought it so unbelievable that she could possibly att... JO LEIGH She was trying to say something else; she was trying to say that the inability to articulate what on... NICK HORNBY Christina never called me names, which was very sweet. She said I was the only person there to suppo... MATTHEW ASHFORD Feast of Harriet Monsell of Clewer, Religious, 1883 There is a certain kind of so-called convers... WILLIAM BARCLAY She is so bright and glorious that you cannot look at her face or her garments for the splendor with... HILDEGARD OF BINGEN It seemed to me an error in reasoning for a man to isolate a woman he loves from all the circumstanc... MILAN KUNDERA All social inequalities which have ceased to be considered expedient, assume the character not of si... JOHN STUART MILL We may claim to believe in God, but we don't want to believe so much that it makes us different. CRAIG GROESCHEL In the short summer night she learned so much. She would have thought a woman would have died of sha... D.H. LAWRENCE It was always the same; other people gave up loving before she did. They got spoilt, or else they we... ÉMILE ZOLA Common thistle is everywhere,” she said. “Which is perhaps why human beings are so relentlessly ... VANESSA DIFFENBAUGH People are raised to believe that happiness is the land to which they are destined to travel. But th... PRAMOEDYA ANANTA TOER He had no cause for self-reproach on the score of neglect, or want of thought, for he had been devot... CHARLES DICKENS Miss Elizabeth Mapp might have been forty, and she had taken advantage of this opportunity by being ... E.F. BENSON Among the remedies which it has pleased Almighty God to give to man to relieve his sufferings, none ... THOMAS SYDENHAM She found herself to be quite worried that something would jump out at her, so she began to whi... NEIL GAIMAN What saddened and incensed her was the abdication of power, so craven, the surrender so close to hom... MARTIN AMIS The wide world was changing, and she wanted a different place in it. Not just wanted, but... JAMES ROBERTSON They have not forgotten the Mysteries,' she said, ‘they have found them too difficult. They want a... MARION ZIMMER BRADLEY
More Marcel Proust
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 It is said that nothing in our lives is ever lost, that nothing can prevent its having been. That is... 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 [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