Marcel Proust Quotes

Gore Vidal said "Nixon is us, we are Nixon." I think we have to acknowledge that combination of idealism and sleaze; we want to be better than we are, and we sometimes don't face up to the real questions.

Our virtues are most frequently but vices disguised.

The literary story is a story that deals with the complicated human heart with an honest tolerance for the ambiguity in which we live. No good guys, no bad guys, just guys: that is, people bearing up in the crucible of their days and certainly not always - if ever - capable of articulating their condition.

I have never played a role in which someone's dark side shouldn't be explored.

I think we all have the capacity of evil in us.

If we are completely honest with ourselves, everyone has a dark side to their personalities.

I think I am more attracted to characters with a subtext, whatever that is and they don't necessarily have to be virtuous, but they have to at least be human.

We would frequently be ashamed of our good deeds if people saw all of the motives that produced them.

The best men are not consistent in good--why should the worst men be consistent in evil?

Ambition is the Subtlest Beast of the Intellectual and Moral Field. It is wonderfully adroit in concealing itself from its owner.

We should often blush for our very best actions, if the world did but see all the motives upon which they were done.

I think I wear my hypocrisy on my sleeve. I would never say I'm not a complete hypocrite.

When our vices leave us, we like to imagine it is we who are leaving them.

It is one of those problems of human nature, which may be noted down, but not solved; - although Ralph felt no remorse at that moment for his conduct towards the innocent, true-hearted girl; although his libertine clients had done precisely what he had expected, precisely what he most wished, and precisely what would tend most to his advantage, still he hated them for doing it, from the very bottom of his soul.

In some sense we are all hypocrites in transition.

The motives even of our best actions will not always bear examination.

Within the best of us, there is some evil, and within the worst of us, there is some good. When we come to see this, we take a different attitude toward individuals.

Vices and virtues are of a strange nature, for the more we have, the fewer we think we have.

Who was it who said that every virtue contains its corresponding vice? C.S. Lewis? Virginia Woolf? You forget. But it has always worried you that what the virtue of wit contained was the vice of scorn.

There is probably no one, however rigid his virtue, who is not liable to find himself, by the complexity of circumstances, living at close quarters with the very vice which he himself has been most outspoken in condemning -- without altogether recognizing it beneath the disguise of ambiguous behavior which it assumes in his presence.

I can't expect others to share my virtues. It's good enough for me if they share my vices.

I was good and bad, but never wicked.

I find that the best virtue I have has in it some tincture of vice.

Sara could commit adultery at one end and weep for her sins at the other, and enjoy both operations at once.

None of our hearts are pure, we always have mixed motives. Are self deceivers, but the worst of all Deceits is to murmur 'Lord, I am not worthy' And, lying easy, turn your face to the wall.