with one image he would make that beauty explode into me. Marcel Proust More Quotes by Marcel Proust More Quotes From Marcel Proust We do not receive wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can make for us, which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world. The lives that you admire, the attitudes that seem noble to you, have not been shaped by a paterfamilias or a schoolmaster, they have sprung from very different beginnings, having been influenced by evil or commonplace that prevailed round them. They represent a struggle and a victory. Marcel Proust journeystruggleattitude And so when studying faces, we do indeed measure them, but as painters, not as surveyors. Marcel Proust studyappearancefaces That translucent alabaster of our memories. Marcel Proust our-memoriesmemories In summoning even the wisest of physicians to our aid, it is probably that he is relying upon a scientific "truth", the error of which will become obvious in just a few years' time. Marcel Proust medicineerrorshealth As soon as he ceased to be mad he became merely stupid. There are maladies we must not seek to cure because they alone protect us from others that are more serious. Marcel Proust maddiseasestupid We were resigned to suffering, thinking that we loved outside ourselves, and we perceive that our love is a function of our sorrow, that our love perhaps is our sorrow. Marcel Proust sufferinglove-isthinking The stellar universe is not so difficult to understand as the real actions of other people, especially of the people with whom we are in love. Marcel Proust reallovepeople The loss of a sense adds as much beauty to the world as its acquisition. Marcel Proust acquisitionlossbeauty Most of the supposed expressions of our feelings merely relieve us of them by drawing them out of us in an indistinct form that does not teach us to know them. Marcel Proust drawingexpressionfeelings It has been said that beauty is a promise of happiness. Conversely, the possibility of pleasure can be a beginning of beauty. Marcel Proust pleasurebeautypromise Many years have passed since that night. The wall of the staircase up which I had watched the light of his candle gradually climb was long ago demolished. And in myself, too, many things have perished which I imagined would last for ever, and new ones have arisen, giving birth to new sorrows and new joys which in those days I could not have foreseen, just as now the old are hard to understand. Marcel Proust walllightnight A little tap at the window, as though some missile had struck it, followed by a plentiful, falling sound, as light, though, as if a shower of sand were being sprinkled from a window overhead; then the fall spread, took on an order, a rhythm, became liquid, loud, drumming, musical, innumerable, universal. It was the rain Marcel Proust lightrainfall Everything that seems imperishable tends to extinguishment. Marcel Proust seems Are not the thoughts of the dying often turned towards the practical, painful, obscure, visceral aspect, towards the "seamy side" of death which is, as it happens, the side that death actually presents to them and forces them to feel, and which far more closely resembles a crushing burden, a difficulty in breathing, a destroying thirst, than the abstract idea to which we are accustomed to give the name of Death? Marcel Proust breathingcrushdeath But,instead of what our imagination makes us suppose and which we worthless try to discover,life gives us something that we could hardly imagine. Marcel Proust imaginationtryinggiving Not caring for their lives' is it? Why, what in the world is there that we should care for if it's not our lives, the only gift the Lord never offers us a second time. Marcel Proust carecaringworld And so it is with our own past. It is a labour in vain to attempt to recapture it: all the efforts of our intellect must prove futile. The past is hidden somewhere outside the realm, beyond the reach of intellect, in some material object (in the sensation which that material object will give us) of which we have no inkling. And it depends on chance whether or not we come upon this object before we ourselves must die. Marcel Proust effortgivingpast For neither our greatest fears nor our greatest hopes are beyond the limits of our strength--we are able in the end both to dominate the first and to achieve the second. Marcel Proust greatest-fearablelimits Things don't change, but by and by our wishes change. Marcel Proust perspectivechangefriendship A cathedral, a wave of a storm, a dancer's leap, never turn out to be as high as we had hoped. Marcel Proust dancingdancemotivational
