1,085 Quotes by Marcel Proust

There are mountainous, arduous days, up which one takes an infinite time to climb, and downward-sloping days which one can descend at full tilt, singing as one goes.

No man is a complete mystery except to himself.

Love is not vain because it is frustrated, but because it is fulfilled. The people we love turn to ashes when we posess them.

It is always thus, impelled by a state of mind which is destined not to last, that we make our irrevocable decisions

The soldier is convinced that a certain indefinitely extendable time period is accorded him before he is killed, the burglar before he is caught, men in general, before they must die. That is the amulet which preserves individuals — and sometimes populations — not from danger, but from the fear of danger, in reality from the belief in danger, which in some cases allows them to brave it without being brave. Such a confidence, just as unfounded, supports the lover who counts on a reconciliation, a letter.

Women who are to some extent resistant, whom one cannot possess at once, whom one does not even know at first whether one will ever possess, are the only interesting ones.

with one image he would make that beauty explode into me.

We are healed of a suffering only by expressing it to the full.

There is no doubt that a person's charms are less frequently a cause of love than a remark such as: 'No, this evening I shan't be free'.