Quotes From "Jean Santeuil" By Marcel Proust

Much that for us is fraught with with happiness or...
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Much that for us is fraught with with happiness or misery, remains almost unnoticed by the rest of the world. Marcel Proust
This book of mine has not been manufactured: it has...
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This book of mine has not been manufactured: it has been garnered. Marcel Proust
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Without inquiring too deeply into the causes which make it possible to find subjects of gaiety always close at hand, the proof of that possibility can be found in the fact that persons of sensitive intelligence are capable of finding comic potentialities in everything and everybody, thereby demonstrating that if some people hold the belief that there is very little that is laughable in the world, the reason is that they lack the ability to find it. Marcel Proust
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All the while that Jean was listening to him, he was vaguely conscious that what gives literature its reality is the result of work accomplished by the human spirit, no matter what the material facts that may have stimulated it (a walk, a night of love, a social drama), of a sort of discovery in the world of the spirit, of the emotions, made by the human intelligence, so that the value of a book is never in the material presented by the writer, but in the nature of the operation he performs upon it. Marcel Proust
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When Jean and his mother left Etreuilles, Monsieur Sureau had gathered for them great boxfuls of hawthorn and of snowballs which Madame Santeuil had not the courage to refuse. But, as soon as Jean's uncle had gone home, she threw them away, saying that they already had more than enough in the way of luggage. And then Jean cried because he had been separated from the darling creatures which he would have liked to take with him to Paris, and because of his mother's naughtiness. Marcel Proust
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Sadness had reigned in undisputed sovereignty over his shadowed childhood. Marcel Proust
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For a young man has strong imagination but poor judgment, so that he imagines others to be as big as he is but considers himself to be very small. He has unbounded trust in the universe but is constantly unsure of himself. Marcel Proust
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The wretchedness of ordinary life, endured so gaily when it is part of our normal existence, is made far worse when it comes as something new, and is exaggerated by the working of the imagination. Marcel Proust
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Forgive me, Bertrand, for having on that day loved in you a beauty in which your self-esteem could take no pride, which could not in any way determine my affection. Marcel Proust
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It is said that nothing in our lives is ever lost, that nothing can prevent its having been. That is why, so very often the weight of the past lies ineluctably upon the present. But that is why it is so real in memory, so wholly itself, so far beyond replacement. Marcel Proust
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When we are nice to others, we generally lose all claim to their respect. Marcel Proust
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Monsieur Beulier never engaged in thought except to speak the truth, and never spoke except to express his thought. Marcel Proust
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He imagined himself lying there, unable to sleep, thinking of his mother, separated from her by the unresponsive blankets tucked too tightly round him, feeling the ceaseless thumping of his heart in the silence of the night, the irrevocability of absence, the rigid stillness of repose, the agony of solitude and sleeplessness. If the room was a prison, the bed was a tomb. Marcel Proust
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Even his mother, his own mother, had once accused him of being a snob. Marcel Proust
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The glutton usually realizes that gout is ever ready to pounce, and that alcohol is bad for him. But possible disaster weighs light in the scale against certain pleasure. Marcel Proust
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Then his tears came once more, and feeling cold he went into his dressing-room to look for something to throw around his shoulders. But he had lost control of his hand so that it moved like a brainless creature and completely failed to carry out the small mathematical operation which consisted, because the inside of the wardrobe was dark, in fumbling a way through the different velvets, silks and satins of his mother's outmoded dresses which, since she had given up wearing them, for many years, she had put away in this piece of furniture, until it could feel the wooden jamb, far back, which separated these garments from his own, and, on reaching the second rough-surfaced coat, to take it from the hanger from which it depended. Instead, it tore down the first piece of fabric it encountered. This happened to be a black velvet coat, trimmed with braid, and lined with cherry-coloured satin and ermine, which, mauled by the violence of his attack, he pulled into the room like a young maiden whom a conqueror has seized and dragged behind him by the hair. In just such a way did Jean now brandish it, but even before his eyes had sent their message to his brain, he was aware of an indefinable fragrance in the velvet, a fragrance that had greeted him when, at ten years old, he had run to kiss his mother–in those days still young, still brilliant and still happy–when she was all dressed up and ready to go out, and flung his arms about her waist, the velvet crushed within his hand, the braid tickling his cheeks, while his lips, pressed to her forehead, breathed in the glittering sense of all the happiness she seemed to hold in keeping for him. Marcel Proust
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Jean's desires, like those of all men in love, were concentrated on the impossible. Marcel Proust
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The woods, the vines, the very stones, were at one with the brightness of the sun and the unblemished sky, and even when the sky grew overcast, the multitude of leaves, as in a sudden change of tone, the earth of the roads, the roofs of the town, seemed as though caught up in the unity of a brand-new world. And all that Jean was feeling seemed without effort to chime with the surrounding oneness, and he was conscious of the perfect joy which is the gift of harmony. Marcel Proust
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It was not that Madame Santeuil's moral values had altered, but only her view of the moral values of others. Marcel Proust