Marcel Proust - In Search of Lost Time (1913)

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At that time, he was satisfying a sensual curiosity by experiencing the pleasures of people who live for love. He had believed he could stop there, that he would not be obliged to learn their sorrows; how small a thing her charm was for him now compared with the astounding terror that extended out from it like a murky halo, the immense anguish of not knowing at every moment what she had been doing, of not possessing her everywhere and always!

Marcel Proust
The truth has no need to be uttered to be made apparent, and... one may perhaps gather it with more certainty, without waiting for words and without even taking any account of them, from countless outward signs, even from certain invisible phenomena, analogous in the sphere of human character to what atmospheric changes are in the physical world.

Marcel Proust
Love is space and time made tender to the heart.
In French: L'amour, c'est l'espace et le temps rendus sensibles au coeur.

Marcel Proust
We passionately long that there may be another life in which we shall be similar to what we are here below. But we do not pause to reflect that, even without waiting for that other life, in this life, after a few years we are unfaithful to what we have been, to what we wished to remain immortally.

Marcel Proust
What artists call posterity is the posterity of the work of art.

Marcel Proust
By art alone we are able to get outside ourselves, to know what another sees of this universe which for him is not ours, the landscapes of which would remain as unknown to us as those of the moon. Thanks to art, instead of seeing one world, our own, we see it multiplied and as many original artists as there are, so many worlds are at our disposal, differing more widely from each other than those which roll round the infinite.

Marcel Proust
For a long time I would go to bed early.
[Fr., Longtemps, je me suis couche de bonne heure.]

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

Marcel Proust
Sometimes in the afternoon sky the moon would pass white as a cloud, furtive, lusterless, like an actress who does not have to perform yet and who, from the audience, in street clothes, watches the other actors for a moment, making herself inconspicuous, not wanting anyone to pay attention to her.

Marcel Proust
What an abyss of uncertainty, whenever the mind feels overtaken by itself; when it, the seeker, is at the same time the dark region through which it must go seeking and where all its equipment will avail it nothing. Seek? More than that: create. It is face to face with something which does not yet exist, which it alone can make actual, which it alone can bring into the light of day.

Marcel Proust
But when one believes in the reality of things, making them visible by artificial means is not quite the same as feeling that they are close at hand.

Marcel Proust
Our desires cut across one another, and in this confused existence it is rare for happiness to coincide with the desire that clamoured for it.

Marcel Proust
Even in the most insignificant details of our daily life, none of us can be said to constitute a material whole, which is identical for everyone, and need only be turned up like a page in an account-book or the record of a will; our social personality is created by the thoughts of other people.

Marcel Proust
The features of our face are hardly more than gestures become, by habit, permanent.

Marcel Proust
From that instant I had not to take another step; the ground moved forward under my feet in that garden where, for so long, my actions had ceased to require any control, or even attention, from my will. Custom came to take me in her arms, carried me all the way up to my bed, and laid me down there like a little child.

Marcel Proust