Marcel Proust Quotes

To know one's self, one must go all the way to horror.

Even a monotonously undeviating path of self-examination does not necessarily lead to self-knowledge. I stumble towards my grave confused and hurt and hungry.

She was waiting, but she didn't know for what. She was aware only of her solitude, and of the penetrating cold, and of a greater weight in the region of her heart.

For the future, I shall rely only upon those elements of my character which I have tested. Who would ever have said that I should find pleasure in shedding tears? That I should love the man who proves to me that I am nothing more than a fool?

I, of whom I know nothing, I know my eyes are open, because of the tears that pour from them unceasingly.

It's true/ I do imbue my blue unto myself/ I make it bitter.

I didnt like being reminded about how self-absorbed i was. I wanted to be over this, done with this. I didnt want to live in a broken world or a broken me. I wasnt trying to weasel out of anything. I just wasnt in the mood of being on the earth that night. I get like that sometimes when it rains, or when i see certain sad movies.

When you think the night has seen your mind, That inside your twisted and unkind, Let me stand to show that you are blind. Please put down you hands cause I see you. I'll be you mirror.

Nobody knows who I am or what I do. Not even I. Don Juan Matus

Say I feel all sad and self-indulgent, then get stung by a wasp, my misery feels quite abstract and I long just to be in spiritual pain once more - 'damn you tiny assassin, clad in yellow and black, how I crave my former innocence where melancholy was my only trial'.

The more I swear I'm happy the more I'm feeling alone

Self-pity comes so naturally to all of us.

In a speech, the columnist Charles Krauthammer.... offered a new version of Socrates' famous saying, "The unexamined life is not worth living." In our age of bottomless self-love and obsession with our own feelings, Krauthammer suggested, "The too-examined life is not worth living either.

Instead of always asking yourself why so-and-so acts this or that way, learn to ask: "What's inside of me that wants to hurt itself over how anyone else acts?"

The ground of all great thoughts is sadness.

Fearing not that I'd become my enemy In the instant that I preach

Nothing could be more absurd than moral lessons at such a moment! Oh, self-satisfied people: with what proud self-satisfaction such babblers are ready to utter their pronouncements! If they only knew to what degree I myself understand all the loathsomeness of my present condition, they wouldn't have the heart to teach me.

There is a certain amount of purpose, acquiescence, and satisfaction in nursing one's melancholy.

I cannot choose to ignore this feeling, of life slowly bleeding out of me. I cannot ignore the fact that life only makes sense to me when I see a smile, or feel another hand in mine.

Despair is the price one pays for self-awareness. Look deeply into life, and you'll always find despair.

If I cried me a river of all my confessions, would I drown in my shallow regret?

We are inconsolable at being deceived by our enemies and being betrayed by our friends, yet we are often content in be being treated like that by our own selves.

It gave me a strange feeling, and the rest of that night I didn’t say much, but merely sat there and drank, trying to decide if I was getting older and wiser, or just plain old.

And why is it, thought Lara, that my fate is to see everything and take it all so much to heart?

Sometimes you can get so far in yourself that you don't know who you are.