The bonds that unite us to another human being are sanctified when he or she adopts the same point of view as ourselves in judging one of our imperfections. Marcel Proust More Quotes by Marcel Proust More Quotes From Marcel Proust How can we have the courage to wish to live, how can we make a movement to preserve ourselves from death, in a world where love is provoked by a lie and consists solely in the need of having our sufferings appeased by whatever being has made us suffer? Marcel Proust suffering love-is lying Fashions, being themselves begotten of the desire for change, are quick to change also. Marcel Proust fashion desire Women who are to some extent resistant, whom one cannot possess at once, whom one does not even know at first whether one will ever possess, are the only interesting ones. Marcel Proust doe interesting firsts I find very reasonable the Celtic belief that the souls of our dearly departed are trapped in some inferior being, in an animal, aplant, an inanimate object, indeed lost to us until the day, which for some never arrives, when we find that we pass near the tree, or come to possess the object which is their prison. Then they quiver, call us, and as soon as we have recognized them, the spell is broken. Freed by us, they have vanquished death and return to live with us. Marcel Proust broken animal death No exile at the South Pole or on the summit of Mont Blanc separates us more effectively from others than the practice of a hidden vice. Marcel Proust vices literature practice All the great things we know have come to us from neurotics. It is they who have founded religions and created great works of art. Marcel Proust great-work great-things art There was nothing abnormal about it when homosexuality was the norm. Marcel Proust normal-and-abnormal homosexuality abnormal Words do not change their meanings so drastically in the course of centuries as, in our minds, names do in the course of a year or two. Marcel Proust names two years That which we remember of our conduct is ignored by our closest neighbour; but that which we have forgotten having said, or even what we never said, will cause laughter even into the next world. Marcel Proust next laughter world For a long time I would go to bed early. Marcel Proust bed long book Griefs, at the moment when they change into ideas, lose some of their power to injure our heart. Marcel Proust grief heart ideas And indeed when we are no longer in love with women whom we meet after many years, is there not the abyss of death between them and ourselves, just as much as if they were no longer of this world, since the fact that we are no longer in love makes the people that they were or the person that we were then as good as dead? Marcel Proust people world years In a language known to us, we have substituted the opacity of the sounds with the transparence of the ideas. But a language we donot know is a closed place in which the one we love can deceive us, making us, locked outside and convulsed in our impotence, incapable of seeing or preventing anything. Marcel Proust sound love ideas Habit! that skillful but slow arranger, which starts out by letting our spirit suffer for weeks in a temporary state, but that thespirit is after all happy to discover, for without habit and reduced to its own resources, the spirit would be unable to make any lodgings seem habitable. Marcel Proust suffering spirit would-be Physical love, so unjustly decried, forces everyone to manifest even the smallest bits of kindness he possesses, of selflessness,that they shine in the eyes of all who surround him. Marcel Proust eye kindness sex ... But all the feelings that evoke in us the joy or the misfortune of a real person are only produced in us through the intermediary of an image of that joy or that misfortune; the ingeniousness of the first novelist was in understanding that, in the apparatus of our emotions, since the image is the only essential element, the simplification which consists of purely and simply suppressing the factual characters is a definitive improvement. Marcel Proust real joy character The true voyage of discovery is not a journey to a new place; it is learning to see with new eyes. Marcel Proust eye journey discovery Unkind people imagine themselves to be inflicting pain on someone equally unkind. Marcel Proust imagine pain people La me decine a fait quelques petits progre' s dans ses connaissances depuis Molie' re, mais aucun dans son vocabulaire. Medicine has made a few, small advances in knowledge since Molie' r e, but none in its vocabulary. Marcel Proust medicine vocabulary son La possession de ce qu'on aime est une joie plus grande encore que l'amour. Possessing what one loves is an even greater joy than love itself. Marcel Proust one-love joy love-is
