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

It was not only Odette's indifference, however, that he must take pains to circumvent; it was also, not infrequently, his own; feeling that, since Odette had had every facility for seeing him, she seemed no longer to have very much to say to him when...

Marcel Proust

The anaesthetic effect of habit being destroyed, I would begin to think - and to feel - such melancholy things.

Marcel Proust

Many years have passed since that night. The wall of the staircase up which I had watched the light of his candle gradually climb was long ago demolished. And in myself, too, many things have perished which I imagined would last for ever, and new one...

Marcel Proust

And so it is with our own past. It is a labour in vain to recapture it: all the efforts of our intellect must prove futile. The past is hidden somewhere outside the realm, beyond the reach of intellect, in some material object (in the sensation which...

Marcel Proust

... so in that moment all the flowers in our garden and in M. Swann's park, and the water-lilies on the Vivonne and the good folk of the village and their little dwellings and the parish church and the whole of Combray and of its surroundings, taking...

Marcel Proust

But since the facts which I should then have recalled would have been prompted only by an exercise of the will, by my intellectual memory, and since the pictures which that kind of memory shews us of the past preserve nothing of the past itself, I sh...

Marcel Proust

Will it ultimately reach the clear surface of my consciousness, this memory, this old, dead moment which the magnetism of an identical moment has travelled so far to importune, to disturb, to raise up out of the very depths of my being? I cannot tell...

Marcel Proust

The reality that I had known no longer existed. The places that we have known belong now only to the little world of space on which we map them for our own convenience. None of them was ever more than a thin slice, held between the contiguous impress...

Marcel Proust

This was many years ago. The staircase wall on which I saw the rising glimmer of his candle has long since ceased to exist. In me, too, many things have been destroyed that I thought were bound to last forever and new ones have formed that have given...

Marcel Proust

I feel that there is much to be said for the Celtic belief that the souls of those whom we have lost are held captive in some inferior being, in an animal, in a plant, in some inanimate object, and thus effectively lost to us until the day (which to ...

Marcel Proust

But, when nothing subsists of an old past, after the death of people, after the destruction of things, alone, frailer but more enduring, more immaterial, more persistent, more faithful, smell and taste still remain for a long time, like souls, rememb...

Marcel Proust

Good God! Think of listening to Wagner for a whole fortnight with a woman who takes about as much interest in music as a tone-deaf newt - that would be fun!

Marcel Proust

It was true that Odette played vilely, but often the most memorable impression of a piece of music is one that has arisen out of a jumble of wrong notes struck by unskilful fingers upon a tuneless piano.

Marcel Proust

What had to move - a leaf of the chestnut tree, for instance - moved.

Marcel Proust

... novels contained something inexpressibly delicious.

Marcel Proust

... was the great and general renunciation which old age makes in preparation for death, the chrysalis stage of life, which may be observed wherever life has been unduly prolonged; even in old lovers who have lived for one another with the utmost int...

Marcel Proust

... the reigns of the kings and queens who are portrayed as kneeling with clasped hands in the windows of churches, were stained by oppression and bloodshed.

Marcel Proust

Bodily passion, which has been so unjustly decried, compels its victims to display every vestige that is in them of unselfishness and generosity, and so effectively that they shine resplendent in the eyes of all beholders.

Marcel Proust

It is the same in life; the heart changes, and that is our worst misfortune; but we learn of it only from reading or by imagination; for in reality its alteration, like that of certain natural phenomena, is so gradual that, even if we are able to dis...

Marcel Proust

I never allow myself to be influenced in the smallest degree either by atmospheric disturbances or by the arbitrary divisions of what is known as Time.

Marcel Proust

... an excellent but an eccentric man in whom the least little thing would, it seemed, often check the flow of his spirits and divert the current of his thoughts.

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