Marcel Proust

A powerful idea communicates some of its strength to him who challenges it.

A woman one loves rarely suffices for all our needs, so we deceive her with another whom we do not love.

All our final decisions are made in a state of mind that is not going to last.

As long as men are free to ask what they must, free to say what they think, free to think what they will, freedom can never be lost and science can never regress.

Every reader finds himself. The writer's work is merely a kind of optical instrument that makes it possible for the reader to discern what, without this book, he would perhaps never have seen in himself.

Everything great in the world comes from neurotics. They alone have founded our religions and composed our masterpieces.

It is always during a passing state of mind that we make lasting resolutions.

It is in moments of illness that we are compelled to recognize that we live not alone but chained to a creature of a different kingdom, whole worlds apart, who has no knowledge of us and by whom it is impossible to make ourselves understood: our body.

It is not because other people are dead that our affection for them grows faint, it is because we ourselves are dying.

Let us be grateful to people who make us happy, they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.