1,085 Quotes by Marcel Proust

Just as those who practice the same profession recognize each other instinctively, so do those who practice the same vice.

A man of letters, merely by reading a phrase, can estimate exactly the literary merit of its author.

We may have revolved every possible idea in our minds, and yet the truth has never occurred to us, and it is from without, when we are least expecting it, that it gives us its cruel stab and wounds us forever.

We love only what we do not wholly possess.

There can be no peace of mind in love, since the advantage one has secured is never anything but a fresh starting-point for future desires.

Do you suppose that it is within your power to insult me? You evidently are not aware to whom you are speaking? Do you imagine that the envenomed spittle of five hundred little gentlemen of your type, heaped one upon another, would succeed in slobbering so much as the tips of my august toes?

The loss of a sense adds as much beauty to the world as its acquisition.

We see things but we don't see them, like things that slid through the mind, one flowing into another.

Lies are essential to humanity.