Zitate von Marcel Proust

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Marcel Proust

Geburtstag: 10. Juli 1871
Todesdatum: 18. November 1922

Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust [pru:st] war ein französischer Schriftsteller und Sozialkritiker. Sein Hauptwerk ist der siebenbändige Roman Auf der Suche nach der verlorenen Zeit.

Zitate Marcel Proust

„Aus dem Umstand, dass mittelmäßige Menschen oft arbeitsam sind und die intelligenten oft faul, kann man nicht schließen, dass Arbeit für den Geist eine bessere Disziplin sei als Faulheit.“

— Marcel Proust
Tage des Lesens. Aus dem Franz. von Helmut Scheffel. 1. Auflage. Frankfurt am Main; Leipzig: Insel-Verlag, 2001. ISBN 3458344187, S. 41

Über Menschen

„Emerson begann selten zu schreiben, ohne vorher ein paar Seiten von Plato zu lesen.“

— Marcel Proust
Tage des Lesens. Aus dem Franz. von Helmut Scheffel. 1. Auflage. Frankfurt am Main; Leipzig: Insel-Verlag, 2001. ISBN 3458344187, S. 36

„Das Lesen liegt an der Schwelle des geistigen Lebens; es kann uns darin einführen, aber es ist nicht dieses Leben.“

— Marcel Proust
Tage des Lesens. Aus dem Franz. von Helmut Scheffel. 1. Auflage. Frankfurt am Main; Leipzig: Insel-Verlag, 2001. ISBN 3458344187, S. 33

Über Leben

„By art alone we are able to get outside ourselves, to know what another sees of this universe which for him is not ours, the landscapes of which would remain as unknown to us as those of the moon.“

— Marcel Proust
Context: By art alone we are able to get outside ourselves, to know what another sees of this universe which for him is not ours, the landscapes of which would remain as unknown to us as those of the moon. Thanks to art, instead of seeing one world, our own, we see it multiplied and as many original artists as there are, so many worlds are at our disposal, differing more widely from each other than those which roll round the infinite and which, whether their name be Rembrandt or Vermeer, send us their unique rays many centuries after the hearth from which they emanate is extinguished.This labour of the artist to discover a means of apprehending beneath matter and experience, beneath words, something different from their appearance, is of an exactly contrary nature to the operation in which pride, passion, intelligence and habit are constantly engaged within us when we spend our lives without self-communion, accumulating as though to hide our true impressions, the terminology for practical ends which we falsely call life. Ch. III: "An Afternoon Party at the House of the Princesse de Guermantes"

„A man is not more entitled to be "received in good society," or at least to wish to be, because he is more intelligent and cultivated. This is one of those sophisms that the vanity of intelligent people picks up in the arsenal of their intelligence to justify their basest inclinations.“

— Marcel Proust
Context: A man is not more entitled to be "received in good society," or at least to wish to be, because he is more intelligent and cultivated. This is one of those sophisms that the vanity of intelligent people picks up in the arsenal of their intelligence to justify their basest inclinations. In other words, having become more intelligent creates some rights to be less. Very simply, diverse personalities are to be found in the breast of each of us, and often the life of more than one superior man is nothing but the coexistence of a philosopher and a snob. Actually, there are very few philosophers and artists who are absolutely detached from ambition and respect for power, from "people of position." And among those who are more delicate or more sated, snobism replaces ambition and respect for power in the same way superstition arises on the ruins of religious beliefs. Morality gains nothing there. Between a worldly philosopher and a philosopher intimidated by a minister of state, the second is still the more innocent. Notes to Sesame and Lilies by John Ruskin, translated by Proust (1906); from Marcel Proust: On Reading Ruskin, trans. Jean Autret and William Burford

„Very simply, diverse personalities are to be found in the breast of each of us, and often the life of more than one superior man is nothing but the coexistence of a philosopher and a snob.“

„If at least, time enough were alloted to me to accomplish my work, I would not fail to mark it with the seal of Time, the idea of which imposed itself upon me with so much force to-day, and I would therein describe men, if need be, as monsters occupying a place in Time infinitely more important than the restricted one reserved for them in space, a place, on the contrary, prolonged immeasurably since, simultaneously touching widely separated years and the distant periods they have lived through — between which so many days have ranged themselves — they stand like giants immersed in Time.“

— Marcel Proust
Final lines, Ch. III : An afternoon party at the house of the Princesse de Guermantes"; translation by Stephen Hudson, Time Regained (1931) If enough time was left to me to complete my work, my first concern would be to describe the people in it, even at the risk of making them seem colossal and unnatural creatures, as occupying a place far larger than the very limited one reserved for them in space, a place in fact almost infinitely extended, since they are in simultaneous contact, like giants immersed in the years, with such distant periods of their lives, between which so many days have taken up their place – in Time. Translation by Ian Patterson, Finding Time Again (2002)

„The time which we have at our disposal every day is elastic; the passions that we feel expand it, those that we inspire contract it; and habit fills up what remains.“

— Marcel Proust
Ch. I: "Madame Swann at Home"

„Faced with the thoughts, the actions of a woman whom we love, we are as completely at a loss as the world's first natural philosophers must have been, face to face with the phenomena of nature, before their science had been elaborated and had cast a ray of light over the unknown.“

— Marcel Proust

„They would have preferred for me, instead of Bloch, companions who would have given me no more than it is proper to give according to the laws of middle-class morality, who would not unexpectedly send me a basket of fruit because they happened, that morning, to have thought of me with affection, but who, being incapable of inclining in my favour, by a simple impulse of imagination and sensibility, the exact balance of the duties and claims of friendship, would be equally incapable of loading the scales to my detriment. Even our faults will not easily divert from the path of their duty towards us those conventional natures of which the model was my great-aunt who, estranged for years from a niece to whom she never spoke, yet made no change in the will in which she left that niece the whole of her fortune, because she was her next-of-kin and it was the 'proper thing to do.“

— Marcel Proust
"Combray"

„And not only does one not seize at once and retain an impression of works that are really great, but even in the content of any such work (as befell me in the case of Vinteuil’s sonata) it is the least valuable parts that one at first perceives... Less disappointing than life is, great works of art do not begin by giving us all their best.“

— Marcel Proust
Ch. I: "Madame Swann at Home"

„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.“

— Marcel Proust
Ch. I: "Grief and Oblivion"

„We passionately long that there may be another life in which we shall be similar to what we are here below. But we do not pause to reflect that, even without waiting for that other life, in this life, after a few years we are unfaithful to what we have been, to what we wished to remain immortally.“

— Marcel Proust
Pt. II, Ch. 2

„A woman is of greater service to our life if she is in it, instead of being an element of happiness, an instrument of sorrow, and there is not a woman in the world the possession of whom is as precious as that of the truths which she reveals to us by causing us to suffer.“

— Marcel Proust
Ch. I: "Grief and Oblivion"

„Even in the most insignificant details of our daily life, none of us can be said to constitute a material whole, which is identical for everyone, and need only be turned up like a page in an account-book or the record of a will; our social personality is created by the thoughts of other people.“

— Marcel Proust
"Overture"

„The bonds that unite another person to ourself exist only in our mind. Memory as it grows fainter relaxes them, and notwithstanding the illusion by which we would fain be cheated and with which, out of love, friendship, politeness, deference, duty, we cheat other people, we exist alone. Man is the creature that cannot emerge from himself, that knows his fellows only in himself; when he asserts the contrary, he is lying.“

— Marcel Proust
Ch. I: "Grief and Oblivion"

Zitate von Marcel Proust

Marcel Proust

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Zitate Marcel Proust

„Aus dem Umstand, dass mittelmäßige Menschen oft arbeitsam sind und die intelligenten oft faul, kann man nicht schließen, dass Arbeit für den Geist eine bessere Disziplin sei als Faulheit.“

„Emerson begann selten zu schreiben, ohne vorher ein paar Seiten von Plato zu lesen.“

„Das Lesen liegt an der Schwelle des geistigen Lebens; es kann uns darin einführen, aber es ist nicht dieses Leben.“

„By art alone we are able to get outside ourselves, to know what another sees of this universe which for him is not ours, the landscapes of which would remain as unknown to us as those of the moon.“

„A man is not more entitled to be "received in good society," or at least to wish to be, because he is more intelligent and cultivated. This is one of those sophisms that the vanity of intelligent people picks up in the arsenal of their intelligence to justify their basest inclinations.“

„Very simply, diverse personalities are to be found in the breast of each of us, and often the life of more than one superior man is nothing but the coexistence of a philosopher and a snob.“

„The time which we have at our disposal every day is elastic; the passions that we feel expand it, those that we inspire contract it; and habit fills up what remains.“

„Faced with the thoughts, the actions of a woman whom we love, we are as completely at a loss as the world's first natural philosophers must have been, face to face with the phenomena of nature, before their science had been elaborated and had cast a ray of light over the unknown.“

„A woman is of greater service to our life if she is in it, instead of being an element of happiness, an instrument of sorrow, and there is not a woman in the world the possession of whom is as precious as that of the truths which she reveals to us by causing us to suffer.“

Die heutige Jubiläen

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Nobuhiro Watsuki1

Martin Heidegger21

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