Quotes by Marcel Proust

About Marcel Proust:

Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust is considered by many to be one of the greatest authors of all time.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

But the true nature which we repress continues nevertheless to abide within us. Thus it is that at times, if we read the latest masterpiece of a man of genius, we are delighted to find in it all those of our own reflexions which we have despised, joy...

Marcel Proust

Let us leave pretty women to men with no imagination.

Marcel Proust

I was so much in the habit of having Albertine with me, and now I suddenly saw a new aspect of Habit. Hitherto I had regarded it chiefly as an annihilating force which suppresses the originality and even the awareness of one's perceptions; now I saw ...

Marcel Proust

It is a mistake to speak of a bad choice in love, since as soon as there is a choice it can only be a bad one.

Marcel Proust

The creation of the world did not occur at the beginning of time, it occurs every day.

Marcel Proust

People are not always very tolerant of the tears which they themselves have provoked.

Marcel Proust

So difficult is it for us to know, with the dead as with the living, whether a thing would cause them joy or sorrow!

Marcel Proust

As soon as jealousy is discovered, it is regarded by the person who is its object as a challenge which justifies deception.

Marcel Proust

I could no longer desire physically without feeling a need for her, without suffering from her absence.

Marcel Proust

We consider it innocent to desire, and heinous that the other person should do so.

Marcel Proust

But I consoled myself with the reflexion that in spite of everything she was for me the real point of intersection between reality and dream.

Marcel Proust

Gardeners produce flowers that are delicious dreams, and others too that are like nightmares.

Marcel Proust

As with the future, it is not all at once but grain by grain that one savours the past.

Marcel Proust

So what I had believed to be nothing to me was simply my entire life. How ignorant one is of oneself.

Marcel Proust

Memory, instead of being a duplicate, always present before one's eyes, of the various events of one's life, is rather a void from which at odd moments a chance resemblance enables ones to resuscitate dead recollections, but even then, there are innu...

Marcel Proust

She was capable of causing me pain, but no longer any joy. Pain alone kept my wearisome attachment alive.

Marcel Proust

Lying is essential to humanity. It plays as large a part perhaps as the quest for pleasure, and is moreover governed by that quest. One lies in order to protect one's pleasure, or one's honour if the disclosure of one's pleasure runs counter to one's...

Marcel Proust

Lies, so often misleading and which form the substance of all conversations, are less effective in covering up a feeling of dislike or of self-interest, or a visit one would rather people did not know about, or a one-day fling one wants to conceal fr...

Marcel Proust

A person has no need of sincerity, nor even of skill in lying, in order to be loved. Here I mean by love reciprocal torture.

Marcel Proust

When we have passed a certain age, the soul of the child that we were and the souls of the dead from whom we sprang come and shower upon us their riches and their spells, asking to be allowed to contribute to the new emotions which we feel and in whi...

Marcel Proust

Let an illness, a duel, a runaway horse make us see death face to face, and how richly we should have enjoyed the life of pleasure, the travels in unknown lands, which are about to be snatched from us! And no sooner is the danger past than we resume ...

Marcel Proust

Author Bio

  • NameMarcel Proust
  • DescriptionFrench novelist, critic, and essayist
  • AliasesValentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust
  • BornJuly 10, 1871
  • DiedNovember 18, 1922
  • CountryFrance
  • ProfessionLibrarian; Novelist; Essayist
  • WorksWithin A Budding Grove
  • AwardsPrix Goncourt; Knight Of The Legion Of Honour