It is always during a passing state of mind that we make lasting resolutions. Marcel Proust More Quotes by Marcel Proust More Quotes From Marcel Proust An hour or so later he received a note from Odette. Swann had left his cigarette case at her house. "If only," she wrote, "you had also forgotten your heart! I should never have let you have it back. Marcel Proust forgotten house heart No man is a complete mystery except to himself. Marcel Proust mystery men The most familiar precepts are not always the truest. Marcel Proust truest familiar truth It is not only by dint of lying to others, but also of lying to ourselves, that we cease to notice that we are lying. Marcel Proust cease lying For, just as in the beginning it is formed by desire, so afterwards love is kept in existence only by painful anxiety. Marcel Proust anxiety desire love-is But when from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, taste and smell alone, more fragile but more enduring, more unsubstantial, more persistent, more faithful, remain poised a long time, like souls, remembering, waiting, hoping, amid the ruins of all the rest; and bear unflinchingly, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection. Marcel Proust smell essence past The tiny, initial clue ... by allowing us to imagine what we do not know, stimulates a desire for knowledge. Marcel Proust tiny desire knowledge Like everybody who is not in love, he thought one chose the person to be loved after endless deliberations and on the basis of particular qualities or advantages. Marcel Proust quality literature love Our memory is like a shop in the window of which is exposed now one, now another photograph of the same person. And as a rule the most recent exhibit remains for some time the only one to be seen. Marcel Proust photograph memories window Illness is the most heeded of doctors: to goodness and wisdom we only make promises; pain we obey. Marcel Proust doctors pain health In reality, in love there is a permanent suffering which joy neutralizes, renders virtual delays, but which can at any moment become what it would have become long earlier if one had not obtained what one wanted -- atrocious. Marcel Proust inspirational-love heartbreak encouragement There's nothing like desire to prevent the things one says from having any resemblance to the things in one's mind. Marcel Proust resemblance mind desire For every sin there is forgiveness, and especially for the sins of youth. Marcel Proust youth sin Le veritable voyage de decouverte ne consiste pas a chercher de nouveaux paysages, mais a avoir de nouveaux yeux. (The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.) Marcel Proust eye real discovery The one thing more difficult than following a regime is keeping from imposing it on others. Marcel Proust difficult following discipline We are less justified in saying that the thinking life of humanity is a miraculous perfectioning of animal and physical life than that it is an imperfection in the organization of spiritual life as rudimentary as the communal existence of protozoa in colonies. Marcel Proust spiritual animal thinking What barrier is so insurmountable as silence? Marcel Proust insurmountable barriers silence Until I saw Chardin's painting, I never realized how much beauty lay around me in my parents' house, in the half-cleared table, in the corner of a tablecloth left awry, in the knife beside the empty oyster shell. Marcel Proust knives oysters parent Every reader finds himself. The writer's work is merely a kind of optical instrument that makes it possible for the reader to discern what, without this book, he would perhaps never have seen in himself. Marcel Proust kind reading book We believe we can change things according to our wishes because that's the only happy solution we can see. We don't think of what usually happens and what is also a happy solution; things don't change, but by and by our wishes change. Marcel Proust perspective believe thinking
