To write that essential book, a great writer does not need to invent it but merely to translate it, since it already exists in each one of us. The duty and task of a writer are those of translator.
MARCEL PROUSTOne must never miss an opportunity of quoting things by others which are always more interesting than those one thinks up oneself.
More Marcel Proust Quotes
-
-
If we are to make reality endurable, we must all nourish a fantasy or two.
MARCEL PROUST -
When you work to please others you can’t succeed, but the things you do to satisfy yourself stand a chance of catching someone’s interest.
MARCEL PROUST -
Nine tenths of the ills from which intelligent people suffer spring from their intellect.
MARCEL PROUST -
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.
MARCEL PROUST -
Just as those who practice the same profession recognize each other instinctively, so do those who practice the same vice.
MARCEL PROUST -
The highest praise of God consists in the denial of him by the atheist who finds creation so perfect that it can dispense with a creator.
MARCEL PROUST -
For each illness that doctors cure with medicine, they provoke ten in healthy people by inoculating them with the virus that is a thousand times more powerful than any microbe: the idea that one is ill.
MARCEL PROUST -
You can’t learn the truth about a man’s intentions by asking him.
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 bonds that unite another person to our self exist only in our mind.
MARCEL PROUST -
Dear Friend: I have nearly died three times since morning.
MARCEL PROUST -
Your soul is a dark forest. But the trees are of a particular species, they are genealogical trees.
MARCEL PROUST -
Happiness serves hardly any other purpose than to make unhappiness possible.
MARCEL PROUST -
No man is a complete mystery except to himself.
MARCEL PROUST -
A woman one loves rarely suffices for all our needs, so we deceive her with another whom we do not love.
MARCEL PROUST