Marcel Proust Quotes


We do not succeed in changing things according to our desire, but gradually our desire changes. The situation that we hoped to change because it was intolerable becomes unimportant. We have not managed to surmount the obstacle, as we were absolutely determined to do, but life has taken us round it, led us past it, and then if we turn round to gaze at the remote past, we can barely catch sight of it, so imperceptible has it become.


Citations

Proust, Marcel. In Search of Lost Time, Volume II: Within a Budding Grove. Translated by C. K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, Modern Library, 1992.

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Marcel Proust
Marcel Proust
  • Born: July 10, 1871
  • Died: November 18, 1922
  • Nationality: French
  • Profession: Novelist, Essayist, Critic

Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust was a French novelist, critic, and essayist who wrote the monumental novel À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time; earlier rendered as Remembrance of Things Past), published in seven parts between 1913 and 1927. He is considered by critics and writers to be one of the most influential authors of the 20th century.