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
flower garden blue
If, I can someday see M. Claude Monet's garden, I feel sure that I shall see something that is not so much a garden of flowers as of colours and tones, less an old-fashioned flower garden than a colour garden, so to speak, one that achieves an effect not entirely nature's, because it was planted so that only the flowers with matching colours will bloom at the same time, harmonized in an infinite stretch of blue or pink.
disappointment garden self
Poets claim that we recapture for a moment the self that we were long ago when we enter some house or garden in which we used to live in our youth. But these are most hazardous pilgrimages, which end as often in disappointment as in success. It is in ourselves that we should rather seek to find those fixed places, contemporaneous with different years.
face features gestures hardly permanent
The features of our face are hardly more than gestures which have become permanent
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.
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
becomes moral soon unhappy
As soon as one is unhappy one becomes moral
contract disposal expand fills habit inspire passions remains time
The time which we have at our disposal every day is elastic; the passions we feel expand it, those that we inspire contract it, and habit fills up what remains
man power powerful
A powerful idea communicates some of its power to the man who contradicts it
actions difficult stellar universe
The stellar universe is not so difficult of comprehension as the real actions of other people.
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
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.
doctor illness knowledge pain pay promise whom
Illness is the doctor to whom we pay most heed; to kindness, to knowledge we make promise only; pain we obey.