1,085 Quotes by Marcel Proust

I felt less unhappy than usual because her melancholy expression, the way the vivid colour of her dress almost cut her off from the rest of the world, made her seem somehow lonely and unhappy, and I found this reassuring.

People don't know when they are happy. They're never so unhappy as they think they are.

And in the same way, again, are not the thoughts of men and women in the agony of death often turned towards the practical, painful, obscure, internal, intestinal aspect, towards that 'seamy side' of death which is, as it happens, the side that death actually presents to them and forces them to feel, a side which far more closely resembles a crushing burden, a difficulty in breathing, a destroying thirst, than the abstract idea to which we are accustomed to give the name of Death?

Wenn man etwas tut, um anderen zu gefallen, kann es nicht gelingen, aber bei den Dingen, die man tut, um sich selbst zu zufriedenzustellen, besteht immer die Aussicht, dass sie auch das Interesse von anderen wecken.

One can seldom admire what one loves.

And continued to regard all their absurdities in the most rosy light through the admiring eyes of love.

I do my intellectual work within myself, and once with other people, it's more or less irrelevant to me that they're intelligent, as long as they are kind, sincere etc."

No doubt, having developed the habit, out of idleness, of each day putting off my work until the day after, I thought that death could be dealt with in the same way.

Homosexuals would be the best husbands in the world if they did not put on an act of loving other women.