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
health years medicine
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.
believe thinking perspective
We believe we can change things according to our wishes because that's the only happy solution we can see. We don't think of what usually happens and what is also a happy solution; things don't change, but by and by our wishes change.
ideas opposites doe
There is no idea that does not carry in itself a possible refutation, no word that does not imply its opposite.
abnormal states
In love, happiness is an abnormal state.
illness
Death is in truth an illness from which we recover
imagination mind slides
The inertia of the mind urges it to slide down the easy slope of imagination, rather than to climb the steep slope of introspection.
art should spectators
A work should convey its entire meaning by itself, imposing it on the spectator even before he knows what the subject is.
art believe mind
I believe that all true art is classic, but the dictates of the mind rarely permit of its being recognized as such when it first appears.
book reading successful
They like my books better in England than in France; a translation would be very successful there.
egoism humanitarianism humans
Human altruism which is not egoism, is sterile.
honor causes position
Let a prize lower my position, if it causes me to be read; that I prefer immediately to all the honors.
ignorance law sophisticated
According to a charming law of nature which is evident even in the most sophisticated societies, we live in complete ignorance of whatever we love.
spiritual thinking animal
We are less justified in saying that the thinking life of humanity is a miraculous perfectioning of animal and physical life than that it is an imperfection in the organization of spiritual life as rudimentary as the communal existence of protozoa in colonies.
music music-is consolation
When I am not too sad to listen, music is my consolation.