Quelques citations de Marcel Proust, classées par thèmes:
Temps, souvenirs, regrets, habitude, changement:
"What artists call posterity is the posterity of the work of art."
"Fashions, being themselves begotten of the desire for change, are quick to change also." / "It is always during a passing state of mind, which is destined not to last, that we make lasting resolutions." / "All our final decisions are made in a state of mind that is not going to last." / "Todas nuestras decisiones finales se toman en un estado mental que no va a durar."
"L'habitude est une seconde nature, elle nous empêche de connaître la première dont elle n'a ni les cruautés, ni les enchantements." / "Habit is a second nature which prevents us from knowing the first, of which it has neither the cruelties nor the enchantments." / "El hábito es una segunda naturaleza que nos impide conocer la primera, la cual no tiene ni las crueldades ni los encantamientos de la segunda." (Marcel Proust) [Dostoïevski a écrit cette pensée similaire: "C'est par paresse humaine que les gens se jugent au premier abord et n'arrivent pas à se connaître."]
"As a rule it is with our being reduced to a minimum that we live; most of our faculties lie dormant because they can rely upon Habit, which knows what there is to be done and has no need of their services. But on this morning of travel, the interruption of the routine of my existence, the unfamiliar place and time, had made their presence indispensable."
"We don't receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us."
"Habit is, of all the plants of human growth, the one that has the least need of nutritious soil in order to live, and is the first to appear on the most seemingly barren rock."
"After a certain age, the more one becomes oneself, the more obvious one's family traits become."
"The smell and taste of things remain poised a long time, like souls, ready to remind us."
"The paradoxes of today are the prejudices of tomorrow, since the most benighted and the most deplorable prejudices have had their moment of novelty when fashion lent them its fragile grace."
"People wish to learn to swim and at the same time to keep one foot on the ground."
"But sometimes illumination comes to our rescue at the very moment when all seems lost; we have knocked at every door and they open on nothing until, at last, we stumble unconsciously against the only one through which we can enter the kingdom we have sought in vain a hundred years - and it opens." / "But sometimes it is just when everything seems to be lost that we experience a presentiment that may save us; one has knocked on all the doors which lead nowhere, and then, unwittingly, one pushes against the only one through which one may enter and for which one would have searched in vain for a hundred years, and it opens."
"Everything that seems imperishable tends to extinguishment."
"Do not wait for life. Do not long for it. Be aware, always and at every moment, that the miracle is in the here and now."
"Even from the simplest, the most realistic point of view, the countries which we long for occupy, at any given moment, a far larger place in our actual life than the country in which we happen to be."
"L'adolescence est le seul temps où l'on ait appris quelque chose. / Adolescence is the only time when we can learn something."
"Like a kaleidoscope which is every now and then given a turn, society arranges successively in different orders elements which one would have supposed immutable, and composes a new pattern."
"There is no man, however wise, who has not at some period of his youth said things, or lived in a way the consciousness of which is so unpleasant to him in later life that he would gladly, if he could, expunge it from his memory."
"In theory one is aware that the earth revolves, but in practice one does not perceive it, the ground upon which one treads seems not to move, and one can live undisturbed. So it is with Time in one's life."
"Memory, instead of being a duplicate, always present before one's eyes, of the various events of one's life, is rather a void from which at odd moments a chance resemblance enables ones to resuscitate dead recollections, but even then, there are innumerable little details which have not fallen into that potential reservoir of memory, and which will remain for ever unverifiable."
"Le temps qui change les être ne modifie pas l'image que nous avons gardée d'eux." / "Although time changes people, it cannot change the image we have already made of them." / "Time, which changes people, does not alter the image we have retained of them."
"As with the future, it is not all at once but grain by grain that one savours the past."
"It comes so soon, the moment when there is nothing left to wait for."
"We are able to find everything in our memory, which is like a dispensary or chemical laboratory in which chance steers our hand sometimes to a soothing drug and sometimes to a dangerous poison."
"Ce n'est pas parce que les autres sont morts que notre affection pour eux s'affaiblit, c'est parce que nous mourrons nous-mêmes." / "It is not because other people are dead that our affection for them grows faint, it is because we ourselves are dying."
"We do not succeed in changing things according to our desire, but gradually our desire changes."
"The memory of a particular image is but regret for a particular moment." / "Le souvenir d'une certaine image n'est que le regret d'un certain instant.", et à ce propos, passé, présent et futur ont été examinés plus intimement ici:
Plaisir, bonheur, malheur:
"Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls bloom." / "Demos las gracias a las personas que nos hacen felices, son los jardineros encantadores que hacen florecer nuestra alma." / "Remercions les personnes qui nous rendent heureux, elles sont les jardiniers enchanteurs qui font fleurir notre âme."
"Pleasure in this respect is like photography. What we take, in the presence of the beloved object, is merely a negative film; we develop it later, when we are at home, and have once again found at our disposal that inner darkroom, the entrance to which is barred to us so long as we are with other people."
"The only paradise is paradise lost." / "The only possible paradises are those we have lost." / "Les vrais paradis sont les paradis qu'on a perdus." / "El único paraíso es el paraíso perdido."
"It is often hard to bear the tears that we ourselves have caused."
"Ce qui pour nous fait le bonheur ou le malheur de notre vie, constitue pour tout autre un fait presque imperceptible."
"People don’t know when they are happy. They’re never so unhappy as they think they are."
"Happiness serves hardly any other purpose than to make unhappiness possible."
"How often is not the prospect of future happiness thus sacrificed to one’s impatient insistence upon an immediate gratification."
"We have such numerous interests in our lives that it is not uncommon, on a single occasion, for the foundations of a happiness that does not yet exist to be laid down alongside the intensification of a grief from which we are still suffering."
"Nous sommes tous obligés, pour rendre la réalite supportable, d’entretenir en nous quelques petites folies." / "We must all indulge in a few follies if we are to make reality bearable." / "If we are to make reality endurable, we must all nourish a fantasy or two".
"It has been said that beauty is a promise of happiness. Conversely, the possibility of pleasure can be a beginning of beauty."
Désir, croyance, introspection:
"Nous n'arrivons pas à changer les choses suivant notre désir, mais peu à peu notre désir change." / "No conseguimos cambiar las cosas de acuerdo con nuestro deseo, pero gradualmente nuestro deseo cambia."
"Aucun homme n’est un mystère complet, sauf pour lui-même." / "Ningún hombre es un completo misterio, excepto para sí mismo."
"Our desires cut across one another, and in this confused existence it is rare for happiness to coincide with the desire that clamoured for it."
"It is desire that engenders belief; if we fail as a rule to take this into account, it is because most of the desires that create beliefs end only with our own life."
"There’s nothing like desire to prevent the things one says from having any resemblance to the things in one’s mind." / "There is nothing like desire for obstructing any resemblance between what one says and what one has on one's mind."
"The facts of life do not penetrate to the sphere in which our beliefs are cherished; they did not engender those beliefs, and they are powerless to destroy them." / "Facts do not find their way into the world in which our beliefs reside; they did not produce our beliefs, they do not destroy them; they may inflict on them the most constant refutations without weakening them, and an avalanche of afflictions or ailments succeeding one another without interruption in a family will not make it doubt the goodness of its God or the talent of its doctor."
"It is desire that engenders belief; if we fail as a rule to take this into account, it is because most of the desires that create beliefs end only with our own life."
"Our intonations contain our philosophy of life, what each of us is constantly telling himself about things."
"It is only with the passions of others that we are ever really familiar, and what we come to discover about our own can only be learned from them."
"One cannot change, that is to say become a different person, while continuing to acquiesce to the feelings of the person one has ceased to be."
"Jamais Noé ne put si bien voir le monde que de l'arche malgré qu'elle fut close et qu'il fit nuit sur la terre." (Marcel Proust) [Dostoïevski a écrit cette pensées similaire: "Ce n'est pas quand il a découvert l'Amérique, mais quand il a été sur le point de la découvrir, que Colomb a été heureux."]
"Les gens ne savent pas quand ils sont heureux. Ils ne sont jamais aussi malheureux qu’ils le pensent." / "La gente no sabe cuándo están felices. Nunca son tan infelices como creen que son."
"One says the things which one feels the need to say, and which the other will not understand: one speaks for oneself alone."
"It is only with the passions of others that we are ever really familiar, and what we come to discover about our own can only be learned from them."
"The inertia of the mind urges it to slide down the easy slope of imagination, rather than to climb the steep slope of introspection."
Erreurs, vérités et mensonges:
https://blogs.mediapart.fr/wawa/blog/221123/erreurs-verites-et-mensonges-selon-marcel-proust
Maladie et Médecine:
https://blogs.mediapart.fr/wawa/blog/041122/maladie-et-medecine-selon-marcel-proust
Beauté, musique, lecture, écriture, littérature, solitude:
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Quelques citations de Marcel Proust sur l'amour, l'attachement ou l'amitié se lisent ici:
https://blogs.mediapart.fr/wawa/blog/070223/attachement-amour-amitie-selon-marcel-proust
L'inspiration de Marcel Proust par les anciens est évoquée ici:
https://blogs.mediapart.fr/wawa/blog/221123/marcel-proust-inspire-par-les-anciens
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