Marcel Proust
Marcel Proust
Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proustwas a French novelist, critic, and essayist best known for his monumental novel À la recherche du temps perdu, published in seven parts between 1913 and 1927. He is considered by many to be one of the greatest authors...
NationalityFrench
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth10 July 1871
CountryFrance
scent vases sound
An hour is not merely an hour, it is a vase full of scents and sounds and projects and climates.
practice vices profession
Just as those who practice the same profession recognize each other instinctively, so do those who practice the same vice.
french-love
We love only what we do not wholly possess.
clouds laughing tea
She poured out Swann's tea, inquired "Lemon or cream?" and, on his answering "Cream, please," said to him with a laugh: "A cloud!" And as he pronounced it excellent, "You see, I know just how you like it." This tea had indeed seemed to Swann, just as it seemed to her; something precious, and love has such a need to find some justification for itself, some guarantee of duration, in pleasures which without it would have no existence and must cease with its passing.
lying humanity essentials
Lies are essential to humanity.
love eye sacrifice
It's odd how a person always arouses admiration for his moral qualities among the relatives of another with whom he has sexual relations. Physical love, so unjustifiably decried, makes everyone show, down to the least detail, all he has of goodness and self-sacrifice, so that he shines even in the eyes of those nearest to him.
dream memories real
The images selected by memory are as arbitrary, as narrow, as elusive as those which the imagination had formed and reality has destroyed. There is no reason why, existing outside ourselves, a real place should conform to the pictures in our memory rather than those in our dreams.
fitness cancer knowledge
It is in moments of illness that we are compelled to recognize that we live not alone but chained to a creature of a different kingdom, whole worlds apart, who has no knowledge of us and by whom it is impossible to make ourselves understood: our body.
knowing firsts enchantment
Habit is a second nature which prevents us from knowing the first, of which it has neither the cruelties nor the enchantments.
intelligent long intellectual
I do my intellectual work inside myself, and once I am with my fellow creatures it is more or less a matter of indifference to me whether or not they are intelligent as long as they are kind, sincere, etc.
book writing humility
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.
book passion writing
Our passions shape our books, repose writes them in the intervals.
believe states openness
We are at times too ready to believe that the present is the only possible state of things.
time lying littles
Time passes, and little by little everything that we have spoken in falsehood becomes true.