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
dream song dust
A collection of bad love songs, tattered from overuse, has to touch us like a cemetery or a village. So what if the houses have no style, if the graves are vanishing under tasteless ornaments and inscriptions? Before an imagination sympathetic and respectful enough to conceal momentarily its aesthetic disdain, that dust may release a flock of souls, their beaks holding the still verdant dreams that gave them an inkling of the next world and let them rejoice or weep in this world.
grief dust leaving
There is in this world in which everything wears out, everything perishes, one thing that crumbles into dust, that destroys itself still more completely, leaving behind still fewer traces of itself than Beauty: namely Grief.
reality dust magic
Existence is of little interest save on days when the dust of realities is mingled with magic sand.
best second
We always end up doing the thing we are second best at.
generally habit proportion
The regularity of a habit is generally in proportion to its absurdity.
decisions destined mind state
It is always thus, impelled by a state of mind which is destined not to last, that we make our irrevocable decisions
expressing healed suffering
We are healed of a suffering only by expressing it to the full.
healed suffering
We are healed of a suffering only by experiencing it in full.
according art artist aspects reality represent selective view
Art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artist's metaphysical value-judgments. An artist recreates those aspects of reality which represent his fundamental view of man's nature.
face features gestures hardly permanent
The features of our face are hardly more than gestures which have become permanent
becomes moral soon unhappy
As soon as one is unhappy one becomes moral
consists discovery landscapes seeking voyage
The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.
advantage desires fresh future love mind piece secured since
There can be no piece of mind in love, since the advantage one has secured is never anything but a fresh starting-point for future desires
good indeed parts seldom
It is seldom indeed that one parts on good terms, because if one were on good terms, one would not part