Any mental activity is easy if it need not be subjected to reality. Marcel Proust More Quotes by Marcel Proust More Quotes From Marcel Proust The reason why a work of genius is not easily admired from the first is that the man who has created it is extraordinary, that few other men resemble him. It is his work itself that, by fertilising the rare minds capable of understanding it, will make them increase and multiply. Marcel Proust understandingmindmen Adultery breathes new life into marriages which have been left for dead. Marcel Proust adulterybreathenew-life Our intonations contain our philosophy of life, what each of us is constantly telling himself about things. Marcel Proust intonationlife-philosophyphilosophy Wars are fought for the benefit of oligarchs, triumphs bought with the blood of peons. Marcel Proust benefitswarblood The thirst for something other than what we have…to bring something new, even if it is worse, some emotion, some sorrow; when our sensibility, which happiness has silenced like an idle harp, wants to resonate under some hand, even a rough one, and even if it might be broken by it. Marcel Proust brokeninspirationhands When one becomes for an instant one's former self, that is to say different from what one has been for some time past, one's sensibility, being no longer dulled by habit, receives from the slightest stimulus vivid impressions which make everything that has preceded them fade into insignificance, impressions to which, because of their intensity, we attach ourselves with the momentary enthusiasm of a drunkard. Marcel Proust differentselfpast Knowing does not always allow us to prevent, but at least the things that we know, we hold them, if not in our hands, but at leastin our thoughts where we may dispose of them at our whim, which gives us the illusion of power over them. Marcel Proust thoughtfulpowerthinking Often it is just lack of imagination that keeps a man from suffering very much. Marcel Proust imaginationsufferingmen It is the tragedy of other people that they are to us merely showcases for the very perishable collections of our own mind. Marcel Proust tragedymindpeople Friendship is in the end no more than: " . . . a lie which seeks to make us believe that we are not irremediably alone." Marcel Proust endsbelievelying What an abyss of uncertainty, whenever the mind feels overtaken by itself; when it, the seeker, is at the same time the dark region through which it must go seeking and where all its equipment will avail it nothing. Seek? More than that: create. It is face to face with something which does not yet exist, which it alone can make actual, which it alone can bring into the light of day. Marcel Proust lightminddark Those whose suffering is due to love are, as we say of certain invalids, their own physicians. Marcel Proust physicianscertainsuffering When I am not too sad to listen, music is my consolation. Marcel Proust consolationmusic-ismusic It is up to my spirit to find the truth. But how? Grave uncertainty, each time the spirit feels beyond its own comprehension; whenit, the explorer, is altogether to obscure land that it must search and where all its baggage is of no use. To search? That is not all: to create. Marcel Proust creativitylandknowledge The images selected by memory are as arbitrary, as narrow, as elusive as those which the imagination had formed and reality has destroyed. There is no reason why, existing outside ourselves, a real place should conform to the pictures in our memory rather than those in our dreams. Marcel Proust realdreammemories I have a horror of sunsets; they're so romantic, so operatic. Marcel Proust sunsethorroremotion Nobility is often no more than the inner aspect which our egotistical feelings assume when we have not yet named and classified them. Marcel Proust egotisticalassumingfeelings I had come in time to learn that it was a mistake to smile a friendly smile when somebody made a fool of me. Marcel Proust mistakefriendlytime A person does not...stand motionless and clear before our eyes with his merits, his defects, his plans, his intentions with regard to ourself exposed on his surface...but is a shadow which we can never succeed in penetrating...a shadow behind which we can alternately imagine, with equal justification, that there burns the flame of hatred and of love. Marcel Proust flameseyehatred Conversation, which is friendship's mode of expression, is a superficial digression which gives us nothing worth acquiring. We may talk for a lifetime without doing more than indefinitely repeat the vacuity of a minute. Marcel Proust expressionmaygiving
