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
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
passion giving unity
For what we suppose to be our love or our jealousy is never a single, continuous and indivisible passion. It is composed of an infinity of successive loves, of different jealousies, each of which is ephemeral, although by their uninterrupted multiplicity they give us the impression of continuity, the illusion of unity.
art lying passion
Our vanity, our passions, our spirit of imitation, our abstract intelligence, our habits have long been at work, and it is the task of art to undo this work of theirs, making us travel back in the direction from which we have come to the depths where what has really existed lies unknown within us.
passion mean pride
This labour of the artist to discover a means of apprehending beneath matter and experience, beneath words, something different from their appearance, is of an exactly contrary nature to the operation in which pride, passion, intelligence and habit are constantly engaged within us when we spend our lives without self-communion, accumulating as though to hide our true impressions, the terminology for practical ends which we falsely call life.
passion familiar
It is only with the passions of others that we are ever really familiar, and what we come to discover about our own can only be learned from them.
book passion writing
Our passions shape our books, repose writes them in the intervals.
passion inspire each-day
The time at our disposal each day is elastic; the passions we feel dilate it, those that inspire us shrink it, and habit fills it.
actions difficult stellar universe
The stellar universe is not so difficult of comprehension as the real actions of other people.
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
generally habit proportion
The regularity of a habit is generally in proportion to its absurdity.
best second
We always end up doing the thing we are second best at.