# Marcel Proust's most beautiful lines

From 'For a long time, I went to bed early' to Time Regained: the most quoted lines from In Search of Lost Time, with the volume they come from.

- 4 votes · 13 items
- Nov 18, 2019 · Léa Morand
- https://even.best/en/l/4590/marcel-proust-s-most-beautiful-lines

## Top 13

1. **We cannot change things to suit our desires, but little by little our desires change.** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — The Fugitive (1925).
2. **The only true voyage… would be not to visit new landscapes, but to have other eyes.** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — The Prisoner (1923).
3. **One can sometimes find a person again, but not abolish time.** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — Sodom and Gomorrah (1921).
4. **Fashions change, being themselves born of the need for change.** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower (1919).
5. **For a long time, I went to bed early.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Swann's Way (1913), the first sentence of the Search.
6. **Always try to keep a patch of sky above your life.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Swann's Way (1913).
7. **An hour is not merely an hour; it is a vase full of scents, sounds, plans and climates.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Time Regained (1927).
8. **In reality, every reader, when reading, is the reader of his own self.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Time Regained (1927).
9. **Regret is an amplifier of desire.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — The Fugitive (1925).
10. **Let us leave pretty women to men without imagination.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — The Fugitive (1925).
11. **The force that goes round the earth most times in a second is not electricity, it is pain.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — The Fugitive (1925).
12. **We remember an atmosphere because some girls smiled in it.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — The Prisoner (1923).
13. **Pain is as powerful a modifier of reality as drunkenness.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — The Fugitive (1925).

How is this ranking ordered? By people's votes: each ▲ adds a point and each ▼ takes one away. Anyone can vote and add what is missing.