1,085 Quotes by Marcel Proust

To be with the people one loves, to speak to them, not to speak to them, it is all the same.

M. de Charlus persisted in not replying. I thought I could see a smile flicker about his lips: the smile of the man who looks down from a great height on the characters and manners of lesser men.

It is a mistake to speak of a bad choice in love, since as soon as there is a choice it can only be a bad one.

We imagine always when we speak that it is our own ears, our own mind, that are listening. The truth which one puts into one's words does not carve out a direct path for itself, it is not irresistibly self-evident. A considerable time must elapse before a truth of the same order can take shape in them.

We strive all the time to give our life its form, but we do so by copying willy-nilly, like a drawing, the features of the person that we are and not of the person we should like to be.

[They] can’t….understand you: you’re such an exceptional person. That’s what I liked about you from the start; I felt that you weren’t like everybody else.

It smells all right; it makes your head go round; it catches your breath; you feel ticklish all over - and not the faintest clue how it's done. The man's a sorcerer; the thing's a conjuring trick, it's a miracle,"...

... the serpent hissing between the lips of Envy is so huge, and so completely fills her wide-opened mouth that the muscles of her face are strained and contorted,...

I would feel the satisfaction of being shut in from the outer world...