Quote

Conversation, which is friendship's mode of expression, is a superficial digression which gives us nothing worth acquiring. We may talk for a lifetime without doing more than indefinitely repeat the vacuity of a minute.

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
Minutes
Repeats
Talk
Minute
Digression
May
Lifetime
Vacuity
Without
Friendship
Indefinitely
Nothing
Conversation
Acquiring
Giving
Worth
Mode
Expression
Superficial
Gives
Repeat

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For 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 which—by means of a sort of snapshot—we take cognisance of this moving universe whirled along by Time, has the contrary effect of immobilising it.
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The charms of the passing woman are generally in direct ratio to the swiftness of our passage.
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We believe we can change things according to our wishes because that's the only happy solution we can see. We don't think of what usually happens and what is also a happy solution things don't change, but by and by our wishes change.
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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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Let a prize lower my position, if it causes me to be read that I prefer immediately to all the honors.
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For every sin there is forgiveness, and especially for the sins of youth.
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A work should convey its entire meaning by itself, imposing it on the spectator even before he knows what the subject is.
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The fixity of a habit is generally in direct proportion to its absurdity.
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The duty and the task of a writer are those of an interpreter.
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If a little dreaming is dangerous, the cure for it is not to dream less but to dream more, to dream all the time.
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A language which we do not know is a fortress sealed.
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La possession de ce qu'on aime est une joie plus grande encore que l'amour. Possessing what one loves is an even greater joy than love itself.
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Desire makes everything blossom possession makes everything wither and fade.
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And indeed when we are no longer in love with women whom we meet after many years, is there not the abyss of death between them and ourselves, just as much as if they were no longer of this world, since the fact that we are no longer in love makes the people that they were or the person that we were then as good as dead?
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I drank a second mouthful in which I find nothing more than in the first, then a third which gives me rather less than the second. It is time to stop the potion is losing its magic.
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After a certain age, the more one becomes oneself, the more obvious one's family traits become.
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Neurosis has an absolute genius for malingering. There is no illness which it cannot counterfeit perfectly. If it is capable of deceiving the doctor, how should it fail to deceive the patient
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Reality is never more than a first step towards an unknown on the road to which one can never progress very far.
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When from a long distant past nothing subsists after the things are broken and scattered, the smell and taste of things remain.
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We strive all the time to give our life its form, but we do so by copying willy-nilly, like a drawing, the features of the person that we are and not of the person we should like to be.
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