The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. Marcel Proust More Quotes by Marcel Proust More Quotes From Marcel Proust Let us be grateful to people who make us happy. Marcel Proust thankful thank-you appreciation Even from the simplest, the most realistic point of view, the countries which we long for occupy, at any given moment, a far larger place in our actual life than the country in which we happen to be. Marcel Proust views long country For each illness that doctors cure with medicine, they provoke ten in healthy people by inoculating them with the virus that is a thousand times more powerful than any microbe: the idea that one is ill. Marcel Proust doctors powerful ideas To the pure all things are pure! Marcel Proust confidence-in-others chastity purity We construct our lives for one person, and when at length it is ready to receive her that person does not come; presently she is dead to us, and we live on, prisoners within the walls which were intended only for her. Marcel Proust length wall doe To write that essential book, a great writer does not need to invent it but merely to translate it, since it already exists in each one of us. The duty and task of a writer are those of translator. Marcel Proust humility writing book 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 imperfection judging views But sometimes illumination comes to our rescue at the very moment when all seems lost; we have knocked at every door and they open on nothing until, at last, we stumble unconsciously against the only one through which we can enter the kingdom we have sought in vain a hundred years - and it opens. Marcel Proust illumination doors years Thanks to art, instead of seeing one world, our own, we see it multiplied and as many original artists as there are, so many worlds are at our disposal. Marcel Proust thanks world art We must love men more than things, and I admire and weep more for the soldiers than for the churches which were only the recording of an heroic gesture which today is reenacted at every moment. Marcel Proust soldier men war The only paradise is paradise lost. Marcel Proust paradise lost Le temps qui change les e" tres ne modifie pas l'image que nous avons garde e d'eux. Although time changes people, it cannot change the image we have already made of them. Marcel Proust avon made people For what we suppose to be our love or our jealousy is never a single, continuous and indivisible passion. It is composed of an infinity of successive loves, of different jealousies, each of which is ephemeral, although by their uninterrupted multiplicity they give us the impression of continuity, the illusion of unity. Marcel Proust unity passion giving Love is a reciprocal torture. Marcel Proust torture literature love The memory of a particular image is but regret for a particular moment. Marcel Proust regret moments memories A sleeping man holds in a circle around him the thread of the hours, the order of years and of worlds. He consults them instinctively upon awaking and in one second reads in them the point of the earth that he occupies, the time past until his arousal; but their ranks can be mingled or broken. Marcel Proust sleep time men We love only what we do not wholly possess. Marcel Proust french-love We passionately long that there may be another life in which we shall be similar to what we are here below. But we do not pause to reflect that, even without waiting for that other life, in this life, after a few years we are unfaithful to what we have been, to what we wished to remain immortally. Marcel Proust waiting long years Your soul is a dark forest. But the trees are of a particular species, they are genealogical trees. Marcel Proust soul dark tree After a certain age our memories are so intertwined with one another that what we are thinking of, the book we are reading, scarcely matters any more. We have put something of ourselves everywhere, everything is fertile, everything is dangerous, and we can make discoveries no less precious than in Pascal's Pensées in an advertisement for soap. Marcel Proust reading memories book
