42 Quotes About Marcel-proust

In my most desperate moments, I have never conceived of anything more horrible than a law office.

My only consolation when I am really sad is to love and to be loved.

When one is sad, it is lovely to lie in the warmth of one's bed, and there, with all effort and struggle at an end, even perhaps with one's head under the blankets, surrender completely to wailing, like branches into the autumn wind.

It is surprising to find that Proust held some extremely caustic views about friendship- in fact, to find that he had an unusually limited conception of the value of his, or indeed anyone's friendships.

Proust was not well place to enjoy honest friendships. For a start, he had far too many true but unkind thoughts about people.

It is, unfortunately, easier to lose a lover than complete In Search of Lost Time.

The moral? To recognize that our best chance of contentment lies in taking up the wisdom offered to us in coded form through our coughs, allergies, social gaffes, and emotional betrayals, and to avoid the ingratitude of those who blame the peas, the bores, the time, and the weather.

M. Proust was more severe than M. de Caillavet on Anatole France: "He was selfish and supercilious. He had read so much that he had left his heart in other people's books, and all that remained was dryness. One day I asked him how he came to know so much. He said, 'Not by being such a handsome young man as you. I wasn't in demand, and instead of going out I studied and learned'.

The problem with cliches is not that they contain false ideas, but rather that they are superficial articulations of very good ones. The sun is often on fire at sunset and the moon discreet, but if we keep saying this every time we encounter a sun or a moon, we will end up believing that this is the last rather than the first word to be said on the subject. Cliches are detrimental insofar as they inspire us to believe that they adequately describe a situation while merely grazing its surface.