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 More Quotes by Marcel Proust More Quotes From Marcel Proust We see things but we don't see them, like things that slid through the mind, one flowing into another. Marcel Proust mind A language which we do not know is a fortress sealed. Marcel Proust fortresseslanguageknows We strive all the time to give our life its form, but we do so by copying willy-nilly, like a drawing, the features of the person that we are and not of the person we should like to be. Marcel Proust drawingidentitygiving It is the wicked deception of love that it begins by making us dwell not upon a woman in the outside world but upon a doll inside our head, the only woman who is always available in fact, the only one we shall ever possess, whom the arbitrary nature of memory, almost as absolute as that of the imagination, may have made as different from the real woman as the real Balbec had been from the Balbec I imagined- a dummy creation that little by little, to our own detriment, we shall force the real woman to resemble. Marcel Proust realimaginationmemories The artist who gives up an hour of work for an hour of conversation with a friend knows that he is sacrificing a reality for something that does not exist. Marcel Proust sacrificegiving-upreality The particulars of life do not matter to the artist; they merely provide him with the opportunity to lay bare his genius. Marcel Proust geniusopportunityart ...Hard people are weak people whom nobody wants, and the strong, caring little whether they are wanted or not, have alone that meekness which the common herd mistake for weakness. Marcel Proust strongcaringmistake After a certain age, the more one becomes oneself, the more obvious one's family traits become. Marcel Proust obviouscertainage Human altruism which is not egoism, is sterile. Marcel Proust humanitarianismegoismhumans Let a prize lower my position, if it causes me to be read; that I prefer immediately to all the honors. Marcel Proust positioncauseshonor According to a charming law of nature which is evident even in the most sophisticated societies, we live in complete ignorance of whatever we love. Marcel Proust sophisticatedignorancelaw Even in the most insignificant details of our daily life, none of us can be said to constitute a material whole, which is identical for everyone, and need only be turned up like a page in an account-book or the record of a will; our social personality is created by the thoughts of other people. Marcel Proust personalitybookpeople Certain favourite roles are played by us so often before the public and rehearsed so carefully when we are alone that we find it easier to refer to their fictitious testimony than to that of a reality which we have almost entirely forgotten. Marcel Proust rolesforgottenreality One reads the papers as one wants to with a bandage over one's eyes without trying to understand the facts, listening to the soothing words of the editor as to the words of one s mistress. Marcel Proust editorseyelistening There is no man ... however wise, who has not at some period of his youth said things, or lived a life, the memory of which is so unpleasant to him that he would gladly expunge it. And yet he ought not entirely to regret it, because he cannot be certain that he has indeed become a wise man -- so far as it is possible for any of us to be wise -- unless he has passed through all the fatuous or unwholesome incarnations by which that ultimate stage must be preceded. Marcel Proust wisdomwisememories Certainly, it is more reasonable to devote one's life to women than to postage stamps or old snuff-boxes, even to pictures or statues. But the example of other collections should be a warning to us to diversify, to have not one woman only but several. Marcel Proust womenexamplewarning I had long since given up trying to extract from a woman as it were the square root of her unknown quantity, the mystery of which a mere introduction was generally enough to dispel. Marcel Proust womensquaresroots Death is in truth an illness from which we recover Marcel Proust illness Like a kaleidoscope which is every now and then given a turn, society arranges successively in different orders elements which one would have supposed immutable, and composes a new pattern. Marcel Proust elementsdifferentorder There is probably no one, however rigid his virtue, who is not liable to find himself, by the complexity of circumstances, living at close quarters with the very vice which he himself has been most outspoken in condemning -- without altogether recognizing it beneath the disguise of ambiguous behavior which it assumes in his presence. Marcel Proust assumingvirtuevices
