Each reader reads only what is already within himself. The book is only a sort of optical instrument which the writer offers to the reader to enable the latter to discover in himself what he would not have found but for the aid of the book. Marcel Proust More Quotes by Marcel Proust More Quotes From Marcel Proust Dear Friend: I have nearly died three times since morning. Marcel Proust dear-friend three morning But sometimes the future is latent in us without our knowing it, and our supposedly lying words foreshadow an imminent reality. Marcel Proust knowing lying reality Daughters of the attitude that produced them, certain women will not appeal to us without the double bed in which we find peace by their side, while others, to be caressed with a more secret intention, require leaves blown by the wind, water rippling in the dark, things as light and fleeting as they are. Marcel Proust women daughter attitude We ought at least, from prudence, never to speak of ourselves, because that is a subject on which we may be sure that other people's views are never in accordance with our own. Marcel Proust views may people A picture's beauty does not depend on the things portrayed in it. Marcel Proust depends doe Nous sommes tous oblige s, pour rendre la re alite supportable, d'entretenir en nous quelques petites folies. We must all indulge in a few follies if we are to make reality bearable. Marcel Proust bearable indulge-in reality Let us leave pretty women to men devoid of imagination. Marcel Proust women imagination men All our final decisions are made in a state of mind that is not going to last. Marcel Proust entrepreneur luck decision We live not alone but chained to a creature of a different kingdom: our body. Marcel Proust different body kingdoms There are mountainous, arduous days, up which one takes an infinite time to climb, and downward-sloping days which one can descend at full tilt, singing as one goes. Marcel Proust infinite-time tilt singing A certain similarity exists, although the type evolves, between all the women we love, a similarity that is due to the fixity of our own temperament, which it is that chooses them, eliminating all those who would not be at once our opposite and our complement, fitted that is to say to gratify our senses and to wring our heart. Marcel Proust type opposites heart I wished to see storms only on those coasts where they raged with most violence. Marcel Proust storm coast violence People don't know when they are happy. They're never so unhappy as they think they are. Marcel Proust unhappy people thinking Illness is the doctor to whom we pay most heed; to kindness, to knowledge, we make promise only; pain we obey. Marcel Proust doctors pain kindness Le style, pour l'e crivain aussi bien que pour le peintre, est une question non de technique mais de vision. For the writer as well as for the painter, style is not a question of technique, but of vision. Marcel Proust style vision technique Masterpieces are no more than the shipwrecked flotsam of great minds. Marcel Proust flotsam great-minds mind I was left alone there in the company of the orchids, roses and violets, which, like people waiting beside you who do not know you, preserved a silence which their individuality as living things made all the more striking, and warmed themselves in the heat of a glowing coal fire. Marcel Proust orchids glowing fire Perhaps the immobility of the things that surround us is forced upon them by our conviction that they are themselves, and not anything else, and by the immobility of our conceptions of them. Marcel Proust surround conception conviction The paradoxes of today are the prejudices of tomorrow, since the most benighted and the most deplorable prejudices have had their moment of novelty when fashion lent them its fragile grace. Marcel Proust prejudice fashion grace Only by art can we get outside ourselves, instead of seeing only one world, our own, we see it under multiple forms. Marcel Proust form world art
