1,085 Quotes by Marcel Proust

So what I had believed to be nothing to me was simply my entire life. How ignorant one is of oneself.

It is a mistake," Labruyère tells us, "to be in love without an ample fortune.

I loved her [Gilberte]; I was sorry not to have had the time and the inspiration to insult her, to hurt her, to force her to keep some memory of me. I thought her so beautiful that I should have liked to be able to retrace my steps so as to shake my fist at her and shout, "I think you're hideous, grotesque; how I loathe you!"_

The best vaccine against anger is to watch others in its throes.

...of all the seeds that fly about the world, the one with the most solid wings, enabling it to be scattered at the greatest distance from its point of origin, is still a joke.

We needed germans in Paris to hear Wagner.

The truth is that as we grow older we kill all those who love us by the cares we give them, by the anxious tenderness we inspire in them and constantly arouse.

Having a body is in itself the greatest threat to the mind... The body encloses the mind in a fortress; before long the mind is besieged on all sides, and in the end the mind has to give itself up.

We have nothing to fear and a great deal to learn from trees, that vigorours and pacific tribe which without stint produces strengthening essences for us, soothing balms, and in whose gracious company we spend so many cool, silent, and intimate hours.