Marcel Proust1871–1922Less disappointing than life, great works of art do not begin by giving us all their best.
Remembrance of Things Past (1913-1927), Vol II: Within a Budding Grove (1919), Ch. I: “Madame Swann at Home”A powerful idea communicates some of its strength to him who challenges it.
The bonds that unite another person to our self exist only in our mind.
Remembrance of Things Past (1913-1927), Vol. VI: The Sweet Cheat Gone (1925), Ch. I: “Grief and Oblivion”If only for the sake of elegance, I try to remain morally pure.
- Remembrance of Things Past (1913-1927), Vol II: Within a Budding Grove (1919), Ch. I: “Madame Swann at Home”
We are healed of a suffering only by experiencing it to the full.
Remembrance of Things Past (1913-1927), Vol. VI: The Sweet Cheat Gone (1925), Ch. I: “Grief and Oblivion”It is often hard to bear the tears that we ourselves have caused.
Fashions, being themselves begotten of the desire for change, are quick to change also.
In Search of Lost Time / Remembrance of Things Past (1913-1927), Vol II: Within a Budding Grove (1919)- Notes to his translation of Ruskin’s Sesame and Lilies (Sésame et les lys, 1906); in Marcel Proust: On Reading Ruskin, tr. Jean Autret and William Burford (Yale University Press, 1987), p. 152
