1,085 Quotes by Marcel Proust

I learned that identical emotions do not spring up in the hearts of all men simultaneously, by a pre-established order. Later on I discovered that, whenever I had read for too long and was in a mood for conversation, the friend to whom I would be burning to say something would at that moment have finished indulging himself in the delights of conversation, and wanted nothing now but to be left to read undisturbed.

A veces estamos demasiado dispuestos a creer que el presente es el único estado posible de las cosas.

[O]ur 'inferiors,' who love us...take pleasure in wounding us in our self-esteem.

You know Balbec so well - do you have friends in the area?'I have friends wherever there are companies of trees, wounded but not vanquished, which huddle together with touching obstinacy to implore an inclement and pitiless sky.'That is not what I meant,' interrupted my father, as obstinate as the trees and as pitiless as the sky.

Presently, one after another, like shyly hopping sparrows, her friends arrived, black against the snow.

And then one goes on to the next. Because love is all rot, you know

If only I could value myself more! Alas! It is impossible.

It is not because other people are dead that our affection for them grows faint, it is because we ourselves are dying.

An excellent but an eccentric man in whom the least little thing would, it seemed, often check the flow of his spirits and divert the current of his thoughts.