But sometimes illumination comes to our rescue at the very moment when all seems lost; we have knocked at every door and they open on nothing until, at last, we stumble unconsciously against the only one through which we can enter the kingdom we have sought in vain a hundred years - and it opens.
Marcel ProustThe human plagiarism which is most difficult to avoid, for individuals... is the plagiarism of ourselves.
Marcel ProustThey like my books better in England than in France; a translation would be very successful there.
Marcel ProustReading is at the threshold of spiritual life; it can introduce us to it; it does not constitute it. There are, however, certain cases, certain pathological cases, so to speak, of spiritual depression in which reading can become a sort of curative discipline and assume the task, through repeated stimulation, of continuously reintroducing a lazy mind into the life of the spirit.
Marcel ProustFor although we know that the years pass, that youth gives way to old age, that fortunes and thrones crumble (even the most solid among them) and that fame is transitory, the manner in whichโby means of a sort of snapshotโwe take cognisance of this moving universe whirled along by Time, has the contrary effect of immobilising it.
Marcel Proust