Marcel Proust Quotes

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.

Words do not change their meanings so drastically in the course of centuries as, in our minds, names do in the course of a year or two.

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

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

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

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

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

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

It is always during a passing state of mind that we make lasting resolutions.

We love only what we do not wholly possess.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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