More quotes by Marcel Proust

"Reading is at the threshold of the spiritual life; it can introduce us to it. It does not constitute it ... There are certain cases of spiritual depression in which reading can become a sort of curative discipline ... reintroducing a lazy mind into the life of the Spirit."
"Let us be grateful to people who make us happy, they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom."
"Only through art can we emerge from ourselves and know what another person sees."
"People do not die for us immediately, but remain bathed in a sort of aura oflife which bears no relation to true immortality but through which theycontinue to occupy our thoughts in the same way as when they were alive. Itis as though they were traveling abroad."
"One says the things which one feels the need to say, and which the other will not understand: one speaks for oneself alone."