1,085 Quotes by Marcel Proust

Our shadows, now parallel, now close together and joined, traced an exquisite pattern at our feet.

Sometimes, on days when the weather was beyond redemption, mere residence in the house, situated in the midst of a steady and continuous rain, had all the gliding ease, the soothing silence, the interest of a sea voyage; another time, on a bright day, to lie still in bed was to let the lights and shadows play around me as round a tree trunk.

Pieni kopaus ikkunaruutuun kuin jokin olisi töytäissyt siihen, sitten väljä kevyt varina kuin ikkunasta kerrosta ylempää olisi heitetty hiekkajyviä, sittern varina laajeni, muuttui säännölliseksi, omaksui rytmin, tuli juoksevaksi, sointuvaksi, musikaaliseksi, määrittämättömäksi, kaiken käsittäväksi: satoi.

For women who do not love us, as for the "disappeared", knowing that we no longer have any hope does not prevent us form continuing to wait. We live on our guard, on watch; women whose son has gone asea on a dangerous exploration imagine at any minute, although it has long been certain that he has perished, that he will enter, miraculously saved, and healthy.

...the memory of a particular image is but regret for a particular moment..

The courage of one's opinions is always a form of calculating cowardice in the eyes of the "other side.

Le veritable voyage de decouverte ne consiste pas a chercher de nouveaux paysages, mais a avoir de nouveaux yeux. (The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.)

None of us constitutes a material whole, identical for everyone, which a person has only to go look up as though we were a book of specifications or a last testament; our social personality is a creation of the minds of others. Even the very simple act that we call "seeing a person we know" is in part an intellectual one. We fill the physical appearance of the individual we see with all the notions we have about him, and of the total picture that we form for ourselves, these notions certainly occupy the greater part.

The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.