Marcel Proust

The real voyage of discovery consists, not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.

We are healed from suffering only by experiencing it to the full.

The charms of a passing woman are usually in direct relation to the speed of her passing.

Every reader finds himself. The writer's work is merely a kind of optical instrument that makes it possible for the reader to discern what, without this book, he would perhaps never have seen in himself.

Marcel Proust

Let us be grateful to people who make us happy: They are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.

Marcel Proust

The only paradise is paradise lost.

Marcel Proust

All our final decisions are made in a state of mind that is not going to last.

Marcel Proust

The fixity of a habit is generally in direct proportion to its absurdity.

Marcel Proust

There is no one, no matter how wise he is, who has not in his youth said things or done things that are so unpleasant to recall in later life that he would expunge them entirely from his memory if that were possible.

Marcel Proust

There is no man, however wise, who has not at some period of his youth said things, or lived in a way the consciousness of which is so unpleasant to him in later life that he would gladly, if he could, expunge it from his memory.

Marcel Proust

It is not because other people are dead that our affection for them grows faint, it is because we ourselves are dying.

Marcel Proust

We don't receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us.

Marcel Proust

I perceived that to express those impressions, to write that essential book, which is the only true one, a great writer does not, in the current meaning of the word, invent it, but, since it exists already in each one of us, interprets it. The duty and the task of a writer are those of an interpreter.

Marcel Proust

Lies are essential to humanity. They are perhaps as important as the pursuit of pleasure and moreover are dictated by that pursuit.

Marcel Proust

A powerful idea communicates some of its strength to him who challenges it.

Marcel Proust

There are perhaps no days of our childhood we lived so fully as those we spent with a favorite book.

Marcel Proust

Let us be grateful to people who make us happy, they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.

Marcel Proust

Only through art can we get outside of ourselves and know another's view of the universe.

Marcel Proust

We do not succeed in changing things according to our desire, but gradually our desire changes.

Marcel Proust

Our memory is like a shop in the window of which is exposed now one, now another photograph of the same person. And as a rule the most recent exhibit remains for some time the only one to be seen.

Marcel Proust

Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.

Marcel Proust

People can have many different kinds of pleasure. The real one is that for which they will forsake the others.

Marcel Proust

People wish to learn to swim and at the same time to keep one foot on the ground.

Marcel Proust

The bonds that unite another person to our self exist only in our mind.

Marcel Proust

Desire makes everything blossom; possession makes everything wither and fade.

Marcel Proust