Famous Quotes by Marcel Proust (50 Quotations)

There is no man, however wise, who has not at some period of his youth said things, or lived in a way the consciousness of which is so unpleasant to him in later life that he would gladly, if he could, expunge it from his memory.

Marcel Proust – [Regret]

There's nothing like desire to prevent the things one says from having any resemblance to the things in one's mind.

Marcel Proust – [Desire]

Things don't change, but by and by our wishes change.

Marcel Proust – [Change]

Time passes, and little by little everything that we have spoken in falsehood becomes true.

Marcel Proust – [Lies and Lying]

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 – [Memory]

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

Marcel Proust – [Suffering]

We become moral when we are unhappy.

Marcel Proust – [Morality]

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

Marcel Proust – [Desire]

We say that the hour of death cannot be forecast, but when we say this we imagine that hour as placed in an obscure and distant future. It never occurs to us that it has any connection with the day already begun or that death could arrive this same afternoon, this afternoon which is so certain and which has every hour filled in advance.

Marcel Proust – [Death and Dying]

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

Marcel Proust – [Things and Little Things]