(?)
Quotes are added by the Goodreads community and are not verified by Goodreads. (Learn more)
Marcel Proust

“All that we can say is that everything is arranged in this life as though we entered it carrying the burden of obligations contracted in a former life; there is no reason inherent in the conditions of life on this earth that can make us consider ourselves obliged to do good, to be fastidious, to be polite even, nor make the talented artist consider himself obliged to begin over again a score of times a piece of work the admiration aroused by which will matter little to his body devoured by worms, like the patch of yellow wall painted with so much knowledge and skill by an artist who must for ever remain unknown and is barely identified under the name Vermeer. All these obligations which have not their sanction in our present life seem to belong to a different world, founded upon kindness, scrupulosity, self-sacrifice, a world entirely different from this, which we leave in order to be born into this world, before perhaps returning to the other to live once again beneath the sway of those unknown laws which we have obeyed because we bore their precepts in our hearts, knowing not whose hand had traced them there — those laws to which every profound work of the intellect brings us nearer and which are invisible only — and still! — to fools.”

Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time [volumes 1 to 7]
Read more quotes from Marcel Proust


Share this quote:
Share on Twitter

Friends Who Liked This Quote

To see what your friends thought of this quote, please sign up!


This Quote Is From

In Search of Lost Time [volumes 1 to 7] In Search of Lost Time [volumes 1 to 7] by Marcel Proust
13,946 ratings, average rating, 1,022 reviews

Browse By Tag