01c. 1896 ADOr she would look at him with a sullen expression, once again he would see before him a face worthy of figuring in Botticelli's Life of Moses, he would place her in it, he would give her neck the necessary inclination; and when he had well and truly painted her in distemper, in the fifteenth century, on the wall of the Sistine Chapel, the idea that she had nevertheless remained here, by the piano, in the present moment, ready to be kissed and possessed, the idea of her materiality and her life would intoxicate him with such force that, his eyes distracted, his jaw tensed as though to devour her, he would swoop down upon that Botticelli virgin and begin pinching her cheeks.Marcel Proust / quote ↗
02c. 1896 ADIt is a mistake," Labruyère tells us, "to be in love without an ample fortune.Marcel Proust / quote ↗
03c. 1896 ADNine tenths of the ills from which intelligent people suffer spring from their intellect. They need at least a doctor who understands the disease. How can you expect Cottard to be able to treat you? He has made allowances for the difficulty of digesting sauces, for gastric trouble, but he has made no allowance for the effect of reading Shakespeare.Marcel Proust / quote ↗
04c. 1896 ADIt is always thus, impelled by a state of mind which is destined not to last, we make our irrevocable decisionsMarcel Proust / quote ↗
05c. 1896 ADIt was that evening, when my mother abdicated her authority, that marked the beginning, along with the slow death of my grandmother, of the decline of my will and of my health. Everything had been decided at the moment when, unable to bear the idea of waiting until the next day to set my lips on my mother's face, I had made my resolution, jumped out of bed, and gone, in my nightshirt, to stay by the window through which the moonlight came, until I heard M. Swann go. My parents having gone with him, I heard the garden gate open, the bell ring, the gate close again...Marcel Proust / quote ↗
06c. 1896 ADIt was not evil that gave her the idea of pleasure, that seemed to her attractive; it was pleasure, rather, that seemed evil. And as, every time that she indulged in it, pleasure came to her attended by evil thoughts such as, ordinarily, had no place in her virtuous mind, she came at length to see in pleasure itself something diabolical, to identify it with Evil.Marcel Proust / quote ↗
07c. 1896 ADIt was not evil that gave her the idea of pleasure, that seemed to her attractive; it was pleasure, rather, that seemed evil.Marcel Proust / quote ↗
09c. 1896 ADShe’s an absolute idiot!” she added with the wisdom invariably shown by people who, not being in love themselves, feel that a clever man should only be unhappy about a person who is worth his while; which is rather like being astonished that anyone should condescend to die of cholera at the bidding of so insignificant a creature as the comma bacillus.Marcel Proust / quote ↗
10c. 1896 ADOne wants to be understood because one wants to be loved, and one wants to be loved because one loves.Marcel Proust / quote ↗
11c. 1896 ADWe imagine always when we speak that it is our own ears, our own mind, that are listening. The truth which one puts into one's words does not carve out a direct path for itself, it is not irresistibly self-evident. A considerable time must elapse before a truth of the same order can take shape in them.Marcel Proust / quote ↗
13c. 1896 AD... which would enable him to prolong for the time being, and to renew for one day more the disappointment, the torturing deception that must always come to him with the vain presence of this woman, whom he might approach, yet never dared embrace.Marcel Proust / quote ↗
14c. 1896 AD... he was like a man into whose life a woman, whom he has seen for a moment passing by, has brought a new form of beauty, which strengthens and enlarges his own power of perception, without his knowing even whether he is ever to see her again whom he loves already, although he knows nothing of her, not even her name.Marcel Proust / quote ↗
15c. 1896 ADWe would like the truth to be revealed to us by novel signs, not by a sentence, a sentence similar to those which we have constantly repeated to ourselves. The habit of thinking prevents us at times from experiencing reality, immunises us against it, makes it seem no more than another thought. There is no idea that does not carry in itself its possible refutation, no word that does not imply its opposite.Marcel Proust / quote ↗
16c. 1896 ADTo determine not to think of it was but to think of it still, to suffer from it still.Marcel Proust / quote ↗
17c. 1896 ADThe habit of thinking prevents us at times from experiencing reality, immunises us against it, makes it seem no more than any other thought.Marcel Proust / quote ↗
18c. 1896 ADI loved her [Gilberte]; I was sorry not to have had the time and the inspiration to insult her, to hurt her, to force her to keep some memory of me. I thought her so beautiful that I should have liked to be able to retrace my steps so as to shake my fist at her and shout, "I think you're hideous, grotesque; how I loathe you!"_Marcel Proust / quote ↗
19c. 1896 ADWhen nothing else subsists from the past, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered...the smell and taste of things remain poised a long time, like souls...bearing resiliently, on tiny and almost impalpable drops of their essence, the immense edifice of memoryMarcel Proust / quote ↗
20c. 1896 ADIt is said that nothing in our lives is ever lost, that nothing can prevent its having been. That is why, so very often the weight of the past lies ineluctably upon the present. But that is why it is so real in memory, so wholly itself, so far beyond replacement.Marcel Proust / quote ↗
22c. 1896 ADHer [Odette's] eyes were beautiful, but so large they seemed to droop beneath their own weight, strained the rest of her face and always made her appear unwell or in a bad mood.Marcel Proust / quote ↗
23c. 1896 ADSo what I had believed to be nothing to me was simply my entire life. How ignorant one is of oneself.Marcel Proust / quote ↗
24c. 1896 ADLying is essential to humanity. It plays as large a part perhaps as the quest for pleasure, and is moreover governed by that quest. One lies in order to protect one's pleasure, or one's honour if the disclosure of one's pleasure runs counter to one's honour. One lies all one's life long, even, especially, perhaps only, to those who love one. For they alone make us fear for our pleasure and desire their esteem.Marcel Proust / quote ↗
