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We construct our lives for one person, and when at length it is ready to receive her that person does not come presently she is dead to us, and we live on, prisoners within the walls which were intended only for her.

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
Person
Receive
Presently
Live
Wall
Prisoners
Come
Dead
Construct
Ready
Constructs
Within
Intended
Lives
Prisoner
Doe
Walls
Persons
Length

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Daughters of the attitude that produced them, certain women will not appeal to us without the double bed in which we find peace by their side, while others, to be caressed with a more secret intention, require leaves blown by the wind, water rippling in the dark, things as light and fleeting as they are.
Marcel Proust
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Having a body is in itself the greatest threat to the mind... The body encloses the mind in a fortress before long the mind is besieged on all sides, and in the end the mind has to give itself up.
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A language which we do not know is a fortress sealed.
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Let us be grateful to people who make us happy.
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...Hard people are weak people whom nobody wants, and the strong, caring little whether they are wanted or not, have alone that meekness which the common herd mistake for weakness.
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A man may have spent his life among the great ones of the earth, who to him have been merely boring relatives or tedious acquaintances because a familiarity engendered in the cradle had stripped them of all glamour in his eyes.
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I blame the newspapers because every day they call our attention to insignificant things, while three or four times in our lives,we read books that contain essential things. Once we feverishly tear the band of paper enclosing our newspapers, things should change and we should find--I do not know--the Pensées by Pascal!
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I wished to see storms only on those coasts where they raged with most violence.
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The courage of one's opinions is always a form of calculating cowardice in the eyes of the other side.
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The heart changes...but we learn of it only from reading or by imagination for in reality its alteration, like that of certain natural phenomena, is so gradual that, even if we are able to distinguish, successively, each of its different states, we are still spared the actual sensation of change.
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Like everybody who is not in love, he thought one chose the person to be loved after endless deliberations and on the basis of particular qualities or advantages.
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They like my books better in England than in France a translation would be very successful there.
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Sometimes in the afternoon sky the moon would pass white as a cloud, furtive, lusterless, like an actress who does not have to perform yet and who, from the audience, in street clothes, watches the other actors for a moment, making herself inconspicuous, not wanting anyone to pay attention to her.
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For neither our greatest fears nor our greatest hopes are beyond the limits of our strength--we are able in the end both to dominate the first and to achieve the second.
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Love is a striking example of how little reality means to us.
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There are optical illusions in time as well as space.
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We have such numerous interests in our lives that it is not uncommon, on a single occasion, for the foundations of a happiness that does not yet exist to be laid down alongside the intensification of a grief from which we are still suffering.
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As soon as he ceased to be mad he became merely stupid. There are maladies we must not seek to cure because they alone protect us from others that are more serious.
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Friendship is in the end no more than: . . . a lie which seeks to make us believe that we are not irremediably alone.
Marcel Proust
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My dear Madame, I just noticed that I forgot my cane at your house yesterday please be good enough to give it to the bearer of this letter. P.S. Kindly pardon me for disturbing you I just found my cane.
Marcel Proust