1,085 Quotes by Marcel Proust

The facts of life do not penetrate to the sphere in which our beliefs are cherished; as it was not they that engendered those beliefs, so they are powerless to destroy them.

The anaesthetic effect of habit being destroyed, I would begin to think - and to feel - such melancholy things.

But I consoled myself with the reflexion that in spite of everything she was for me the real point of intersection between reality and dream.

So few are the easy victories as the ultimate failures.

But old age, to begin with, has something in common with death. Some face it with indifference, not because they have more courage than others, but because they have less imagination.

Her face was plastered with layers of powder and looked like a face of stone. And with her noble profile, she seemed, on the triangular, moss-covered pedestal hidden by her cape, like a crumbling goddess in a park.

For every death is a simplification of existence for the others, removes the necessity to show gratitude, the obligation to pay visits.

It was not that Madame Santeuil's moral values had altered, but only her view of the moral values of others.

I must choose to cease from suffering or to cease from loving.