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Marcel Proust
(10 Jul 1871 - 19 Nov 1922)
French author and critic.
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Science Quotes by Marcel Proust (11 quotes)
Le seul véritable voyage ... ce ne serait pas d’aller vers de nouveaux paysages, mais d’avoir d’autres yeux, de voir l’univers avec les yeux d’un autre, de cent autres, de voir les cent univers que chacun d’eux voit …
The only true voyage of discovery … would be not to visit new landscapes, but to possess other eyes, to see the universe through the eyes of another, of a hundred others, to see the hundred universes that each of them sees.
[Also often seen translated in the shortened form: 'The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeing new landscapes, but in having new eyes.']
The only true voyage of discovery … would be not to visit new landscapes, but to possess other eyes, to see the universe through the eyes of another, of a hundred others, to see the hundred universes that each of them sees.
[Also often seen translated in the shortened form: 'The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeing new landscapes, but in having new eyes.']
— Marcel Proust
'La Prisonnière', À la recherche du temps perdu (1913-27). In Roger Shattuck, Proust (1974), 131.
A doctor who doesn’t say too many foolish things is a patient half-cured. (1921)
— Marcel Proust
'Le Côté de Guermantes', À la recherche du temps perdu (1913-27).
As soon as he ceased to be mad he became merely stupid. There are maladies we must not seek to cure because they alone protect us from others that are more serious.
— Marcel Proust
'Le Côté de Guermantes', À la recherche du temps perdu (1913-27).
Illness is the most heeded of doctors: to goodness and wisdom we only make promises; pain we obey.
— Marcel Proust
…...
In theory one is aware that the earth revolves but in practice one does not perceive it, the ground on which one treads seems not to move, and one can live undisturbed. So it is with Time in one's life. (1918)
— Marcel Proust
'À l’ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs', À la recherche du temps perdu (1913-27).
It is in moments of illness that we are compelled to recognize that we live not alone but chained to a creature of a different kingdom, whole worlds apart, who has no knowledge of us, and by whom it is impossible to make ourselves understood: our body.
— Marcel Proust
'Le Côté de Guermantes', À la recherche du temps perdu (1913-27).
Neurosis has an abosolute genius for malingering. There is no illness which cannot counterfeit perfectly … If it is capable of deceiving the doctor, how should it fail to deceive the patient.
— Marcel Proust
'Le Côté de Guermantes', À la recherche du temps perdu (1913-27).
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.
— Marcel Proust
Swann’s Way. Quoted in Kim Lim (ed.), 1,001 Pearls of Spiritual Wisdom: Words to Enrich, Inspire, and Guide Your Life (2014), 40
The only true voyage of discovery, the only fountain of Eternal Youth, would be not to visit strange lands but to possess other eyes, to behold the universe through the eyes of another, of a hundred others, to behold the hundred universes that each of them beholds, that each of them is.
— Marcel Proust
From La Prisonnière (1923), a volume in the series of novels À la Recherche du Temps Perdu (Remembrance of Things Past). Translated by C.K. Moncrief as The Captive (1929, 1949), 70-71. This text is often seen paraphrased as “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeing new sights, but in looking with new eyes.” [Note that the context refers to the “eyes” of artists (including composers), and their ability to transport the viewer or listener with “a pair of wings, … which would enable us to traverse infinite space” to see new vistas through their art.]
The voyage of discovery lies not in seeking new horizons, but in seeing with new eyes.
— Marcel Proust
A commonly seen, loose paraphrase shortened from text in La Prisonnière (1923), a volume in the series of novels À la Recherche du Temps Perdu (Remembrance of Things Past). Translated by C.K. Moncrief as The Captive (1929, 1949), 70-71. For more context, see the longer quote which begins, “The only true voyage of discovery,…” on the Marcel Proust Quotes page of this website.
Theories and schools, like microbes and globules, devour each other and by their struggle ensure the continuing of life.
— Marcel Proust
In Cities of the Plain (1927).
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 
