Quote

We pack the physical outline of the creature we see with all the ideas we have already formed about him, and in the complete picture of him we compose in our minds those ideas have certainly the principal place.

Marcel Proust

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Ideas
Complete
Outline
Mind
Picture
Compose
Minds
Outlines
Physical
Pack
Creatures
Packs
Certainly
Formed
Already
Principal
Place
Creature

More quotes by Marcel Proust

Image
Even the simple act that we call going to visit a person of our acquaintance is in part an intellectual act. We fill the physical appearance of the person we see with all the notions we have about him, and in the totality of our impressions about him, these notions play the most important role.
Marcel Proust
Image
Most 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 Proust
Image
People wish to learn to swim and at the same time to keep one foot on the ground.
Marcel Proust
Image
Nine tenths of the ills from which intelligent people suffer spring from their intellect.
Marcel Proust
Image
The charms of the passing woman are generally in direct ratio to the swiftness of our passage.
Marcel Proust
Image
The moments of the past do not remain still they retain in our memory the motion which drew them towards the future, towards a future which has itself become the past, and draw us on in their train.
Marcel Proust
Image
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.
Marcel Proust
Image
We may have revolved every possible idea in our minds, and yet the truth has never occurred to us, and it is from without, when we are least expecting it, that it gives us its cruel stab and wounds us forever.
Marcel Proust
Image
Dear Friend: I have nearly died three times since morning.
Marcel Proust
Image
The fixity of a habit is generally in direct proportion to its absurdity.
Marcel Proust
Image
Let a prize lower my position, if it causes me to be read that I prefer immediately to all the honors.
Marcel Proust
Image
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
Image
Love is a reciprocal torture.
Marcel Proust
Image
I wished to see storms only on those coasts where they raged with most violence.
Marcel Proust
Image
La me decine a fait quelques petits progre' s dans ses connaissances depuis Molie' re, mais aucun dans son vocabulaire. Medicine has made a few, small advances in knowledge since Molie' r e, but none in its vocabulary.
Marcel Proust
Image
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.
Marcel Proust
Image
It is only with the passions of others that we are ever really familiar, and what we come to discover about our own can only be learned from them.
Marcel Proust
Image
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
Image
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.
Marcel Proust
Image
The facts of life do not penetrate to the sphere in which our beliefs are cherished they did not engender those beliefs, and they are powerless to destroy them.
Marcel Proust