1,085 Quotes by Marcel Proust

There is no idea that does not carry in itself a possible refutation, no word that does not imply its opposite.

Time, which changes people, does not alter the image we have retained of them.

On devient moral de' s qu'on est malheureux. We become moral once we are miserable.

The only true voyage of discovery, . . . would be not to visit strange lands but to possess other eyes.

In love, happiness is an abnormal state.

Certain favourite roles are played by us so often before the public and rehearsed so carefully when we are alone that we find it easier to refer to their fictitious testimony than to that of a reality which we have almost entirely forgotten.

... we made much less happy by the kindness of a great writer, which strictly speaking we find only in his books, than we suffer from the hostility of a woman whom we have not chosen for her intelligence, but whom we cannot stop ourselves from loving.

Illness is the doctor to whom we pay most heed; to kindness, to knowledge, we make promise only; pain we obey.

On ne re c° oit pas la sagesse, il faut la de couvrir soi-me" me, apre' s un trajet que personne ne peut faire pour nous, ne peut nous e pargner. We do not receive wisdom.We must discover it ourselves after experiences which no one else can have for us and from which no one else can spare us.