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

Even when she had to make some one a present of the kind called 'useful,' when she had to give an armchair or some table-silver or a walking-stick, she would choose 'antiques,' as though their long desuetude had effaced from them any semblance of uti...

Marcel Proust

Sadists of Mlle Vinteuil's sort are creatures so purely sentimental, so naturally virtuous, that even sensual pleasure appears to them as something bad, the prerogative of the wicked. And when they allow themselves for a moment to enjoy it they endea...

Marcel Proust

... I experienced, suddenly, that special pleasure, which bore no resemblance to any other...

Marcel Proust

It may well have been, too, that the smiling moderation with which she faced and answered these blasphemies, that this tender and hypocritical rebuke appeared to her frank and generous nature as a particularly shameful and seductive form of that crim...

Marcel Proust

...the novelist has brought us to that state, in which, as in all purely mental states, every emotion is multiplied tenfold, into which his book comes to disturb us as might a dream, but a dream more lucid, and of a more lasting impression than those...

Marcel Proust

... the idea that 'Life' contains situations more interesting and more romantic than all the romances ever written.

Marcel Proust

I would feel the satisfaction of being shut in from the outer world...

Marcel Proust

Quartering the topmost branches of one of the tall trees, an invisible bird was striving to make the day seem shorter, exploring with a long-drawn note the solitude that pressed it on every side, but it received at once so unanimous an answer, so pow...

Marcel Proust

I dined with Legrandin on the terrace of his house by moonlight. "There is a charming quality, is there not," he said to me, "in this silence; for hearts that are wounded, as mine is, a novelist whom you will read in time to come asserts that there i...

Marcel Proust

look you, there are only two classes of men, the magnanimous, and the rest; and I have reached an age when one has to take sides, to decide once and for all whom one is going to like and dislike, to stick to the people one likes, and, to make up for ...

Marcel Proust

He had, indeed, one of those advantages which men who had lived and moved in the world enjoy over others, even men of intelligence and refinement, who have never gone into society, namely that they no longer see it transfigured by the longing or repu...

Marcel Proust

But when his mistress for the time being was a woman in society, or at least one whose birth was not so lowly, nor her position is so irregular that he was unable to arrange for her reception in 'society,' then for her sake he would return to it, but...

Marcel Proust

And if Francoise then, inspired like a poet with a flood of confused reflections upon bereavement, grief, and family memories, were to plead her inability to rebut my theories, saying: "I don't know how to espress (sic) myself" - I would triumph over...

Marcel Proust

When he spoke, his words came with a confusion which was delightful to hear because one felt that it indicated not so much a defect in his speech as a quality of his soul, as it were a survival from the age of innocence which he had never wholly outg...

Marcel Proust

And what little she allowed herself to say was said in a strained tone, in which her ingrained timidity paralysed her tendency to freedom and audacity of speech.

Marcel Proust

in my cowardice I became at once a man, and did what all we grown men do when face to face with suffering and injustice; I preferred not to see them

Marcel Proust

After luncheon the sun, conscious that it was Saturday, would blaze an hour longer in the zenith,...

Marcel Proust

She poured out Swann's tea, inquired "Lemon or cream?" and, on his answering "Cream, please," said to him with a laugh: "A cloud!" And as he pronounced it excellent, "You see, I know just how you like it." This tea had indeed seemed to Swann, just as...

Marcel Proust

To determine not to think of it was but to think of it still, to suffer from it still.

Marcel Proust

... sterile, splendid torture of understanding and loving...

Marcel Proust

... the objects which we admire have no absolute value in themselves...

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