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

The flowers which played then among the grass, the water which rippled past in the sunshine, the whole landscape which served as environment to their apparition lingers around the memory of them still with its unconscious or unheeding air;...

Marcel Proust

He went farther; agonised by the reflection, at the moment when it passed by him, so near and yet so infinitely remote, that, while it was addressed to their ears, it knew them not, he would regret, almost, that it had a meaning of its own, an intrin...

Marcel Proust

... the cattleyas especially (these being, with chrysanthemums, her favourite flowers), because they had the supreme merit of not looking in the least like other flowers, but of being made, apparently, out of scraps of silk or satin.

Marcel Proust

... it was with an unusual intensity of pleasure, a pleasure destined to have a lasting effect upon his character and conduct...

Marcel Proust

... the kiss, the bodily surrender which would seem natural and but moderately attractive...

Marcel Proust

... there was no need for him to hasten towards the attainment of a happiness already captured and held in a safe place, which would not escape his grasp again.

Marcel Proust

Anxiously he explored every one of these vaguely seen shapes, as though among the phantoms of the dead, in the realms of darkness, he had been searching for a lost Eurydice.

Marcel Proust

Swann could at once detect in this story one of those fragments of literal truth which liars, when taken by surprise, console themselves by introducing into the composition of the falsehood which they have to invent, thinking that it can be safely in...

Marcel Proust

But she was wrong; it was what gave her away; she had not taken into account that this fragmentary detail of the truth had sharp edges which could not be made to fit in, except to those contiguous fragments of the truth from which she had arbitrarily...

Marcel Proust

But the lies which Odette ordinarily told were less innocent, and served to prevent discoveries which might have involved her in the most terrible difficulties with one or another of her friends. And so, when she lied, smitten with fear, feeling hers...

Marcel Proust

At the moment when, ordinarily, there was still an hour to be lived through before meal-time sounded, we would all know that in a few seconds we should see the endives make their precocious appearance, followed by the special favour of an omelette, a...

Marcel Proust

[...] they imagine that the life they are obliged to lead is not that for which they are really fitted, and they bring to their regular occupations either a fantastic indifference or a sustained and lofty application, scornful, bitter and conscientio...

Marcel Proust

My body, still too heavy with sleep to move...

Marcel Proust

Now my uncle knew many of them personally, and also ladies of another class, not clearly distinguished from actresses in my mind. He used to entertain them at his house.

Marcel Proust

Like a fruit hidden among its leaves, which has grown and ripened unobserved by man, until it falls of its own accord, there came upon us one night the kitchen-maid's confinement.

Marcel Proust

... like an entirely cloudless sky when one is going mountaineering...

Marcel Proust

... it had arrested for all eternity the moment which it had been trying to make pass more quickly.

Marcel Proust

Swann, with that almost arrogant charity of a man of the world who, amid the dissolution of all his own moral prejudices, finds in another's shame merely a reason for treating him with a friendly benevolence...

Marcel Proust

... washed clean like a porcelain, with housewifely care...

Marcel Proust

... with a quiet suggestion of infinity...

Marcel Proust

... I felt that I was not penetrating to the full depth of my impression, that something more lay behind that mobility, that luminosity, something which they seemed at once to contain and to conceal.

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