1,085 Quotes by Marcel Proust

The great quality of true art is that it rediscovers, grasps and reveals to us that reality far from where we live, from which we get farther and farther away as the conventional knowledge we substitute for it becomes thicker and more impermeable.

The heart changes...but we learn of it only from reading or by imagination; for in reality its alteration, like that of certain natural phenomena, is so gradual that, even if we are able to distinguish, successively, each of its different states, we are still spared the actual sensation of change.

La me decine a fait quelques petits progre' s dans ses connaissances depuis Molie' re, mais aucun dans son vocabulaire. Medicine has made a few, small advances in knowledge since Molie' r e, but none in its vocabulary.

The charms of the passing woman are generally in direct proportion to the swiftness of her passing.

The most powerful soporific is sleep itself.

I have a horror of sunsets; they're so romantic, so operatic.

It is always during a passing state of mind that we make lasting resolutions.

La possession de ce qu'on aime est une joie plus grande encore que l'amour. Possessing what one loves is an even greater joy than love itself.

Only through art can we get outside of ourselves and know another's view of the universe which is not the same as ours and see landscapes which otherwise would remain unknown to us like the landscapes of the moon. Thanks to art, instead of seeing a single world, our own, we see it multiply until we have before us as many worlds as there are original artists.