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Less disappointing than life, great works of art do not begin by giving us all their best.

Marcel Proust

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Marcel Proust
Age: 51 †
Born: 1871
Born: July 10
Died: 1922
Died: November 18
Author
Essayist
Literary Critic
Novelist
Poet
Prosaist
Writer
Paris
France
Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust
Proust
Valentin-Louis-Georgs-Eugène-Marcel Proust
Valentin Louis Georges Eugéne Marcel Proust
Valentin-Louis-Georges-Eugéne-Marcel Proust
Valentin Louis Georges Eugene Marcel Proust
Valentin-Louis-Georges-Eugene-Marcel Proust
Bernard d'Algouvres
Valentin-Louis-Georges-Eugène-Marcel Proust
Great
Disappointing
Life
Disappointment
Begin
Works
Less
Art
Best
Giving

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A woman whom we need and who makes us suffer elicits from us a whole gamut of feelings far more profound and vital than a man of genius who interests us.
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Existence is of little interest save on days when the dust of realities is mingled with magic sand.
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Habit! that skillful but slow arranger, which starts out by letting our spirit suffer for weeks in a temporary state, but that thespirit is after all happy to discover, for without habit and reduced to its own resources, the spirit would be unable to make any lodgings seem habitable.
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For theories and schools, like microbes and corpuscles, devour one another and by their strife ensure the continuity of life.
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Women who are to some extent resistant, whom one cannot possess at once, whom one does not even know at first whether one will ever possess, are the only interesting ones.
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Only by art can we get outside ourselves, instead of seeing only one world, our own, we see it under multiple forms.
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For often I have wished to see a person again without realising that it was simply because that personal recalled to me a hedge of hawthorns in blossom, and I have been led to believe, and to make someone else believe, in a renewal of affection, by what was no more than an inclination to travel.
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Those whose suffering is due to love are, as we say of certain invalids, their own physicians.
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A photograph acquires something of the dignity which it ordinarily lacks when it ceases to be a reproduction of reality and shows us things that no longer exist.
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Everything great in the world comes from neurotics. They alone have founded our religions and composed our masterpieces.
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There is no more ridiculous custom than the one that makes you express sympathy once and for all on a given day to a person whose sorrow will endure as long as his life. Such grief, felt in such a way is always present, it is never too late to talk about it, never repetitious to mention it again.
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We have nothing to fear and a great deal to learn from trees, that vigorours and pacific tribe which without stint produces strengthening essences for us, soothing balms, and in whose gracious company we spend so many cool, silent, and intimate hours.
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I had long since given up trying to extract from a woman as it were the square root of her unknown quantity, the mystery of which a mere introduction was generally enough to dispel.
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Our intonations contain our philosophy of life, what each of us is constantly telling himself about things.
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It is a mistake to speak of a bad choice in love, since, as soon as a choice exists, it can only be bad.
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Everything we think of as great has come to us from neurotics. It is they and they alone who found religions and create great works of art. The world will never realize how much it owes to them and what they have suffered in order to bestow their gifts on it.
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If there is one thing more difficult than submitting oneself to a regime it is refraining from imposing it on other people.
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We must never be afraid to go too far, for truth lies beyond.
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An hour or so later he received a note from Odette. Swann had left his cigarette case at her house. If only, she wrote, you had also forgotten your heart! I should never have let you have it back.
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The duty and the task of a writer are those of an interpreter.
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