Eschyle avait déjà formulé ce genre de pensée, 25 siècles avant Marcel Proust, comme ceci: "C'est une loi: souffrir pour comprendre. Le bonheur rend aveugle." [Fiodor Dostoïevski la formule comme ceci: "La souffrance est l'unique cause de la conscience."]
Marcel Proust reformule et enrichit cette idée sous diverses formulations (traduites dans de nombreuses langues, notamment en anglais, langue que Proust connaissait bien):
"Only evil forces us to observe, and teaches, and allows to break down mechanisms which we would not know without that" (Marcel Proust)
"Happiness is beneficial for the body, but it is grief (sorrow) that develops the powers of the mind." / "La felicidad es beneficiosa para el cuerpo, pero es el dolor el que desarrolla los poderes de la mente." (Marcel Proust)
"We are healed of a suffering only by experiencing it to the full." / "Estamos curados del sufrimiento solo al experimentarlo al máximo." (Marcel Proust)
"It is often simply from lack of creative imagination that we do not go far enough in suffering." / "Often it is just lack of imagination that keeps a man from suffering very much." (Marcel Proust)
"Les neuf dixièmes des maux dont souffrent les personnes intelligentes proviennent de leur intellect." / "Nueve décimas partes de los males de los que sufren las personas inteligentes brotan de su intelecto." (Marcel Proust)
"Happiness serves hardly any other purpose than to make unhappiness possible." (Marcel Proust)
"On devient moral dès qu'on est malheureux." / "We become moral once we are miserable." / "One becomes moral as soon as one is unhappy." (Marcel Proust)
"It is often hard to bear the tears that we ourselves have caused." (Marcel Proust)
Autres maximes "à l'ancienne" de Marcel Proust (on pense à François de la Rochefoucauld):
"On déteste ce qui nous est semblable, et nos propres défauts vus du dehors nous exaspèrent." (Marcel Proust)
"Prosperity of wicked men runs like a torrent past, and soon is spent." (Marcel Proust)
"We ought never to lose our tempers with people who, when we find them at fault, begin to snigger. They do so not because they are laughing at us, but because they are afraid of our displeasure." (Marcel Proust)
"Human altruism which is not egoism, is sterile." (Marcel Proust)
"One must never miss an opportunity of quoting things by others which are always more interesting than those one thinks up oneself." (Marcel Proust)
"Not caring for their lives' is it? Why, what in the world is there that we should care for if it's not our lives, the only gift the Lord never offers us a second time." (Marcel Proust)
"Autrui nous est indifférent et l'indifférence n'incline pas à la méchanceté." (Marcel Proust)
"Unkind people imagine themselves to be inflicting pain on someone equally unkind." (Marcel Proust)
"As long as men are free to ask what they must, free to say what they think, free to think what Thea will, freedom can never be lost and science can never regress." (Marcel Proust)
"Our intonations contain our philosophy of life, what each of us is constantly telling himself about things." (Marcel Proust)
"The best vaccine against anger is to watch others in its throes." (Marcel Proust)
"To the pure all things are pure!" (Marcel Proust)
"A powerful idea communicates some of its strength to him who challenges it." / "A powerful idea communicates some of its power to the man who contradicts it." (Marcel Proust)
"Our worst fears, like our greatest hopes, are not outside our powers, and we can come in the end to triumph over the former and to achieve the latter." / "Nos plus grandes peurs, comme nos plus grands espoirs, ne sont pas au-dessus de nos forces et, en fin de compte, nous pouvons les surmonter pour triompher des premières et réaliser les seconds." / "Nuestros peores temores, como nuestras mayores esperanzas, no están fuera de nuestros poderes, y al final podemos vencer para triunfar sobre los primeros y lograr los segundos." (Marcel Proust)
"No exile at the South Pole or on the summit of Mont Blanc separates us more effectively from others than the practice of a hidden vice." (Marcel Proust)
"De profession à profession, on se devine, et de vice à vice aussi." / "From profession to profession we guess each other, and from vice to vice too." / "Just as those who practice the same profession recognize each other instinctively, so do those who practice the same vice." / "Así como aquellos que practican la misma profesión se reconocen instintivamente, también lo hacen aquellos que practican el mismo vicio." (Marcel Proust)
"Life is extraordinarily suave and sweet with certain natural, witty, affectionate people who have unusual distinction and are capable of every vice, but who make a display of none in public and about whom no one can affirm they have a single one. There is something supple and secret about them. Besides, their perversity gives spice to their most innocent occupations, such as taking a walk in the garden at night." (Marcel Proust)
"The bonds that unite us to another human being are sanctified when he or she adopts the same point of view as ourselves in judging one of our imperfections." (Marcel Proust)
"I never much like thus being told without possibility of reply what I am to think about people whom I know." (Marcel Proust)
"La jeunesse une fois passée, il est rare que l'on reste confiné dans l'insolence." (Marcel Proust)
"Le veritable voyage de decouverte ne consiste pas a chercher de nouveaux paysages, mais à avoir de nouveaux yeux." / "The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes." / "Instead of seeking new landscapes, develop new eyes." / "Discovery consists not in seeking new lands, but in seeing with new eyes." / "My destination is no longer a place, rather a new way of seeing." / "El único verdadero viaje de descubrimiento consiste no en buscar nuevos paisajes, sino en mirar con nuevos ojos." (Marcel Proust)
"Nous ne recevons pas la sagesse, nous devons la découvrir par nous-mêmes, après un voyage à travers le désert que personne d'autre ne peut faire à notre place." / "No recibimos sabiduría, debemos descubrirla por nosotros mismos, después de un viaje a través del desierto que nadie más puede hacer por nosotros." (Marcel Proust)
"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)
Autres pensées "à l'ancienne" de Marcel Proust (on pense à Blaise Pascal ou à Baruch Spinoza):
"Il n'y a pas une idée qui ne porte en elle sa réfutation possible." / "We would like the truth to be revealed to us by novel signs, not by a sentence, a sentence similar to those which we have constantly repeated to ourselves. The habit of thinking prevents us at times from experiencing reality, immunises us against it, makes it seem no more than another thought. There is no idea that does not carry in itself its possible refutation, no word that does not imply its opposite."
"Our words are, as a general rule, filled by the people to whom we address them with a meaning which those people derive from their own substance, a meaning widely different from that which we had put into the same words when we uttered them."
"Words do not change their meanings so drastically in the course of centuries as, in our minds, names do in the course of a year or two."
"Les maximes les plus profondes sont celles où la pensée semble la plus indépendante des mots et de leur aménagement."
"No man is a complete mystery except to himself." / "We ought at least, from prudence, never to speak of ourselves, because that is a subject on which we may be sure that other people’s views are never in accordance with our own."
"The creation of the world did not occur at the beginning of time, it occurs every day."
"I longed for nothing more than to behold a stormy sea, less as a mighty spectacle than as a momentary revelation of the true life of nature."
"The highest praise of God consists in the denial of him by the atheist who finds creation so perfect that it can dispense with a creator."
…
D'autres pensées de Marcel Proust se lisent ici:
https://blogs.mediapart.fr/wawa/blog/200321/marcel-proust
…