There was nothing abnormal about it when homosexuality was the norm. Marcel Proust More Quotes by Marcel Proust More Quotes From Marcel Proust The heart does not lie. Marcel Proust doe heart lying What artists call posterity is the posterity of the work of art. Marcel Proust posterity work art In reality, every reader is, while reading, the reader of his own self. Marcel Proust reading self reality Only through art can we get outside of ourselves and know another's view of the universe which is not the same as ours and see landscapes which otherwise would remain unknown to us like the landscapes of the moon. Thanks to art, instead of seeing a single world, our own, we see it multiply until we have before us as many worlds as there are original artists. Marcel Proust moon views art The most powerful soporific is sleep itself. Marcel Proust most-powerful powerful sleep We feel in one world, we think and name in another. Between the two we can set up a system of references, but we cannot fill in the gap. Marcel Proust names life thinking My dear Madame, I just noticed that I forgot my cane at your house yesterday; please be good enough to give it to the bearer of this letter. P.S. Kindly pardon me for disturbing you; I just found my cane. Marcel Proust yesterday house giving The duty and the task of a writer are those of an interpreter. Marcel Proust interpreter duty tasks But to ask pity of our body is like discoursing in front of an octopus, for which our words can have no more meaning than the sound of the tides, and with which we should be appalled to find ourselves condemned to live. Marcel Proust octopus our-words sound There is not a woman in the world the possession of whom is as precious as that of the truths which she reveals to us by causing us to suffer. Marcel Proust truth suffering world No days, perhaps, of all our childhood are ever so fully lived as those that we had regarded as not being lived at all: days spent wholly with a favourite book. Everything that seemed to fill them full for others we pushed aside, because it stood between us and the pleasures of the Gods. Marcel Proust childhood pleasure book Now the same mystery which often veils from our eyes the reason for a catastrophe envelops just as frequently, when love is in question, the suddenness of certain happy solutions, such as had been brought to me by Gilberte's letter. Happy, or at least seemingly happy, for there are few that can really be happy when we are dealing with a sentiment of such a kind that any satisfaction we can give it does no more, as a rule, than dislodge some pain. And yet sometimes a respite is granted us, and we have for a little while the illusion of being healed. Marcel Proust pain eye love-is The inertia of the mind urges it to slide down the easy slope of imagination, rather than to climb the steep slope of introspection. Marcel Proust slides imagination mind I was not at all worried about finding my doctor boring; I expected from him, thanks to an art of which the laws escaped me, that he pronounce concerning my health an indisputable oracle by consulting my entrails. Marcel Proust doctors law art A man of letters, merely by reading a phrase, can estimate exactly the literary merit of its author. Marcel Proust literary-merit reading men We are able to find everything in our memory, which is like a dispensary or chemical laboratory in which chance steers our hand sometimes to a soothing drug and sometimes to a dangerous poison. Marcel Proust drug memories hands Perhaps the pleasure one feels in writing is not the infallible test of the literary value of a page; perhaps it is only a secondary state which is often superadded, but the want of which can have no prejudicial effect on it. Perhaps some of the greatest masterpieces were written while yawning. Marcel Proust yawning want writing May you always see a blue sky overhead, my young friend; and then, even when the time comes, as it has come for me now, when the woods are black, when night is fast falling, you will be able to console yourself, as I do, by looking up at the sky. Marcel Proust young-friends night fall I blame the newspapers because every day they call our attention to insignificant things, while three or four times in our lives,we read books that contain essential things. Once we feverishly tear the band of paper enclosing our newspapers, things should change and we should find--I do not know--the Pensées by Pascal! Marcel Proust insignificant-things book knowledge We exist only by virtue of what we possess, we possess only what is really present to us, and many of our memories, our moods, our ideas sail away on a voyage of their own until they are lost to sight! Then we can no longer take them into account in the total which is our personality. But they know of secret paths by which to return to us. Marcel Proust sight memories ideas
