Marcel Proust Quotes

People are more easily induced to do, and do more easily, what they are already used to; but people also learn to do things new to them.

What seems new is only new to us.

Everything in life is unusual until you get accustomed to it -The Scarecrow - The Marvellous Land Of Oz by L. Frank Baum pg 103 chapter 13

Everything I see is something I haven't memorized.

Here's the deal: the extraordinary becomes ordinary really quickly. One minute, everything is new and amazing, the next it's expected.

Any time you're comfortable or familiar with something, it's easier than something you're not familiar with.

Have you noticed when you wear a hat for a long time it feels like it's not there anymore? And then when you take it off it feels like it's still there?

Everything in life is unusual until you become accustomed to it.

There is a law written in the darkest of the Books of Life, and it is this: If you look at a thing nine hundred and ninety-nine times, you are perfectly safe; if you look at it the thousandth time, you are in frightful danger of seeing it for the first time.

I think I prefer the constant renewal. It's almost like sandpapering down any details or any contour of familiarities.

He who lives to see two or three generations is like a man who sits some time in the conjurer's booth at a fair, and witnesses the performance twice or thrice in succession. The tricks were meant to be seen only once; and when they are no longer a novelty and cease to deceive, their effect is gone.

Use all of your senses.

A type of revolutionary novelty may be extremely beautiful in itself; but, for the creatures of habit that we are, its very novelty tends to make it illegible, at any rate to begin with.

You cannot be known Better than I know you.

All you imagined, no matter how wild it might seem, was no more than a disguised version of what you already knew.

I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something.

Po swirled upward from where it had been sitting, and floated over to the window. "When you go swimming and you put your head under the water," Po said, "and everything is strange and underwater-sounding, and strange and underwater-looking, you don't miss the air do you? You don't miss the above-water sounds and the above-water look. It's just different." "True." Liesl was quiet for a moment. Then she added, "But I bet you'd miss it if you were drowning. I bet you'd really miss the air then."

With equality of experience and of general faculties, a woman usually sees much more than a man of what is immediately before her.

As soon as we are shown the existence of something old in a new thing, we are pacified.

New things are made familiar, and familiar things are made new.

The first element of change is awareness. You can’t change something unless you know it exists.

I really enjoy forgetting. When I first come to a place, I notice all the little details. I notice the way the sky looks. The color of white paper. The way people walk. Doorknobs. Everything. Then I get used to the place and I don't notice those things anymore. So only by forgetting can I see the place again as it really is.

Nothing can be loved or hated unless it is first known.

In new situations, I look carefully at appearances. In familiar ones, I glance.

We find things beautiful because we recognize them and contrariwise we find things beautiful because their novelty surprises us.