Theoretically, we know that the world turns, but in fact we do not notice it, the earth on which we walk does not seem to move andwe live on in peace. This is how it is concerning Time in our lives. And to render its passing perceptible, novelists must... have their readers cross ten, twenty, thirty years in two minutes.
Marcel ProustWe are at times too ready to believe that the present is the only possible state of things.
Marcel ProustThe sight of the little madeleine had recalled nothing to my mind before I tasted it...
Marcel ProustBut sometimes the future is latent in us without our knowing it, and our supposedly lying words foreshadow an imminent reality.
Marcel ProustIf a little dreaming is dangerous, the cure for it is not to dream less but to dream more, to dream all the time.
Marcel ProustAs 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.
Marcel ProustThe great renunciation of old age as it prepared for death, wraps itself up in its chrysalis, which may be observed at the end of lives that are at all prolonged, even in old lovers who have lived for one another, in old friends bound by the closest ties of mutual sympathy, who, after a certain year, cease to make the necessary journey or even to cross the street to see one another, cease to correspond, and know that they will communicate no more in this world.
Marcel Proust