I cannot express the uneasiness caused in me by this intrusion of mystery and beauty into a room I had at last filled with myself to the point of paying no more attention to the room than to that self. The anesthetizing influence of habit having ceased, I would begin to have thoughts, and feelings, and they are such sad things.
Marcel ProustIt is the tragedy of other people that they are to us merely showcases for the very perishable collections of our own mind.
Marcel ProustKnowing does not always allow us to prevent, but at least the things that we know, we hold them, if not in our hands, but at leastin our thoughts where we may dispose of them at our whim, which gives us the illusion of power over them.
Marcel ProustThere can be no peace of mind in love, since the advantage one has secured is never anything but a fresh starting-point for future desires.
Marcel ProustMost of the supposed expressions of our feelings merely relieve us of them by drawing them out of us in an indistinct form that does not teach us to know them.
Marcel ProustHabit is a second nature which prevents us from knowing the first, of which it has neither the cruelties nor the enchantments.
Marcel ProustI understood that all the material of a literary work was in my past life, I understood that I had acquired it in the midst of frivolous amusements, in idleness, in tenderness and in pain, stored up by me without my divining its destination or even its survival, as the seed has in reserve all the ingredients which will nourish the plant.
Marcel Proust