1,085 Quotes by Marcel Proust

This labour of the artist to discover a means of apprehending beneath matter and experience, beneath words, something different from their appearance, is of an exactly contrary nature to the operation in which pride, passion, intelligence and habit are constantly engaged within us when we spend our lives without self-communion, accumulating as though to hide our true impressions, the terminology for practical ends which we falsely call life.

It is seldom indeed that one parts on good terms, because if one were on good terms, one would not part

Our memory is like a shop in the window of which is exposed now one, now another photograph of the same person. And as a rule the most recent exhibit remains for some time the only one to be seen.

How paradoxical it is to search reality for the pictures that are stored in one's memory.

Our desires cut across one another, and in this confused existence it is rare for happiness to coincide with the desire that clamoured for it.

Art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artist's metaphysical value-judgments. An artist recreates those aspects of reality which represent his fundamental view of man's nature.

Photography is the product of complete alienation.

I was left alone there in the company of the orchids, roses and violets, which, like people waiting beside you who do not know you, preserved a silence which their individuality as living things made all the more striking, and warmed themselves in the heat of a glowing coal fire...

Illness is the most heeded of doctors: to goodness and wisdom we only make promises; pain we obey.