They reminded me that it was my fate to pursue only phantoms, creatures whose reality existed to a great extent in my imagination; for there are people - and this had been my case since youth - for whom all the things that have a fixed value, assessable by others, fortune, success, high positions, do not count; what they must have is phantoms. They sacrifice all the rest, devote all their efforts, make everything else subservient to the pursuit of some phantom. But this soon fades away; then they run after another only to return later on to the first.

Marcel Proust In Search of Lost Time
Also known as: Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust
English
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About Marcel Proust

Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust (10 July 1871 – 18 November 1922) was a French novelist, essayist and critic.

Biography information from Wikiquote

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Additional quotes by Marcel Proust

By art alone we can get out of ourselves, find out what another person sees of this universe which is not the same as ours... Thanks to art, instead of seeing only one world, we see it multiplied, and we have as many different worlds at our disposition as there are original artists.

We exist only by virtue of what we possess, we possess only what is really present to us, and many of our memories, our moods, our ideas sail away on a voyage of their own until they are lost to sight! Then we can no longer take them into account in the total which is our personality. But they know of secret paths by which to return to us.

فهمیدم احساس‌های مشابهی، هم‌زمان و به ترتیبی از پیش حساب‌شده، به همه‌ی آدم‌ها دست نمی‌دهد. بعدها، هر بار که کتاب خواندنی طولانی حال گپ‌زدن را در من انگیخته بود می‌دیدم که برعکس، دوستی که اشتیاق سخن‌گفتن با او را داشتم گفت‌وگویی را با لذت به پایان برده است و دیگر می‌خواهد آسوده جیزبخواند. اگر مهربانانه به پدر و مادرم فکر کرده و برای خوشامدشان تصمیم‌هایی بسیار عاقلانه و شایسته گرفته بودم، می‌دیدم که آن دو در همان زمان به خطای کوچکی از من که خودم فراموش‌اش کرده بودم پی برده‌اند و در همان لحظه‌ای که به سوی‌شان پر می‌کشیدم تا ببوسم‌شان، به سختی سرزنش‌ام می‌کردند