Top 44 Marcel Proust Quotes About Life (WISDOM)

Top 10 Most Famous Marcel Proust Quotes (BEST)

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

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

Do not wait for life. Do not long for it. Be aware, always and at every moment, that the miracle is in the here and now. — Do not wait for life. Do not long for it. Be aware, always and at every moment, that the **miracle** is in the here and now.

Always try to keep a patch of sky above your life.

My destination is no longer a place, rather a new way of seeing.

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

Remembrance of things past is not necessarily the remembrance of things as they were.

A change in the weather is sufficient to recreate the world and ourselves. — A **change** in the weather is sufficient to recreate the world and ourselves.

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. — 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.

One must never miss an opportunity of quoting things by others which are always more interesting than those one thinks up oneself. — One must never miss an **opportunity** of quoting things by others which are always more interesting than those one thinks up oneself.

14 WiseMarcel Proust Quotes that Will Make You Think (WISDOM)

“The bonds between ourselves and another person exists only in our minds. Memory as it grows fainter loosens them, and notwithstanding the illusion by which we want to be duped and which, out of love, friendship, politeness, deference, duty, we dupe other people, we exist alone. Man is the creature who cannot escape from himself, who knows other people only in himself, and when he asserts the contrary, he is lying.”
Marcel Proust

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

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

Sometimes in this life, under the stress of an exceptional emotion, people do say what they think. — Sometimes in this **life**, under the stress of an exceptional emotion, people do say what they think.

The true paradises are the paradises that we have lost.

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

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

“People do not die for us immediately, but remain bathed in a sort of aura of life which bears no relation to true immortality but through which they continue to occupy our thoughts in the same way as when they were alive. It is as though they were traveling abroad.”
Marcel Proust

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

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

Like many intellectuals, he was incapable of saying a simple thing in a simple way.

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

Three-quarters of the sicknesses of intelligent people come from their intelligence. They need at least a doctor who can understand this sickness. — Three-quarters of the sicknesses of intelligent people come from their **intelligence**. They need at least a doctor who can understand this sickness.

8 Marcel Proust Quotes About Love

“People who are not in love fail to understand how an intelligent man can suffer because of a very ordinary woman. This is like being surprised that anyone should be stricken with cholera because of a creature so insignificant as the common bacillus.”
Marcel Proust

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

Love is space and time measured by the heart. — **Love** is space and **time** measured by the heart.

Love is not vain because it is frustrated, but because it is fulfilled. The people we love turn to ashes when we possess them. — **Love** is not vain because it is frustrated, but because it is fulfilled. The people we love turn to ashes when we possess them.

In a separation it is the one who is not really in love who says the more tender things.

It is often hard to bear the tears that we ourselves have caused.

Those whose suffering is due to love are, as we say of certain invalids, their own physicians.

What a profound significance small things assume when the woman we love conceals them from us.

9 Marcel Proust Quotes on Reality and Imagination

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

If we are to make reality endurable, we must all nourish a fantasy or two.

We must never be afraid to go too far, for truth lies beyond. — We must never be afraid to go too far, for **truth** lies beyond.

We think and name in one world, we live and feel in another.

As long as men are free to ask what they must, free to say what they think, free to think what they will, freedom can never be lost and science can never regress. — As long as men are free to ask what they must, free to say what they think, free to think what they will, **freedom** can never be lost and science can never regress.

“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.”
Marcel Proust

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

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

Everything great in the world comes from neurotics. They alone have founded our religions and composed our masterpieces.

2 Marcel Proust Quotes on Women

The charms of the passing woman are generally in direct proportion to the swiftness of her passing.

Let us leave pretty women to men with no imagination.

2 Marcel Proust Quotes About Time and Death

Time, which changes people, does not alter the image we have of them. — **Time**, which changes people, does not alter the image we have of them.

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

3 Marcel Proust Quotes on Habit

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. — 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.

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

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

2 Marcel Proust Quotes About Art

“Thanks to art, instead of seeing one world only, our own, we see that world multiply itself and we have at our disposal as many worlds as there are original artists, worlds more different one from the other than those which revolve in infinite space, worlds which, centuries after the extinction of the fire from which their light first emanated, whether it is called Rembrandt or Vermeer, send us still each one its special radiance.”
Marcel Proust

Only through art can we emerge from ourselves and know what another person sees.

4 Marcel Proust Quotes on Reading

“Every reader, as he reads, is actually the reader of himself. The writer’s work is only a kind of optical instrument he provides the reader so he can discern what he might never have seen in himself without this book. The reader’s recognition in himself of what the book says is the proof of the book’s truth.”
Marcel Proust