Marcel Proust Quotes

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

It comes so soon, the moment when there is nothing left to wait for.

We become moral when we are unhappy.

If a little dreaming is dangerous, the cure for it is not to dream less but to dream more, to dream all the time.

In theory one is aware that the earth revolves, but in practice one does not perceive it, the ground upon which one treads seems not to move, and one can live undisturbed. So it is with Time in one’s life.

Habit is a second nature which prevents us from knowing the first, of which it has neither the cruelties nor the enchantments.

The only paradise is paradise lost.

Happiness is beneficial for the body, but it is grief that develops the powers of the mind.

Only by art can we get outside ourselves, instead of seeing only one world, our own, we see it under multiple forms.

Love is a striking example of how little reality means to us.

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.

Illness is the doctor to whom we pay most heed; to kindness, to knowledge, we make promise only; pain we obey.

We are able to find everything in our memory, which is like a dispensary or chemical laboratory in which chance steers our hand sometimes to a soothing drug and sometimes to a dangerous poison.

Happiness serves hardly any other purpose than to make unhappiness possible.