We say that the hour of death cannot be forecast, but when we say this we imagine that hour as placed in an obscure and distant future. It never occurs to us that it has any connection with the day already begun or that death could arrive this same afternoon, this afternoon which is so

About Marcel Proust

Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust ( PROOST; French: [maʁsɛl pʁust]; 10 July 1871 – 18 November 1922) was a French novelist, literary critic, and essayist best known for his novel À la recherche du temps perdu (translated into English as In Search of Lost Time, earlier Remembrance of Things...

More quotations from Marcel Proust

Only through art can we emerge from ourselves and know what another person sees.

—Marcel Proust

It is unwise to be too sure of one's own wisdom. It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might err.

—Marcel Proust

wisdom

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.

—Marcel Proust

discovery

The only paradise is paradise lost.

—Marcel Proust

paradise impossibility

It is always during a passing state of mind that we make lasting resolutions.

—Marcel Proust

thinking

More quotations tagged with “death”

As the day grew brighter, he grew dimmer, and more of his friends gathered around his bed. They took up their oars and rowed with him as far as they could.

—Carrie Fisher

friends death darkness passage

Animals have these advantages over man: they never hear the clock strike, they die without any idea of death, they have no theologians to instruct them, their last moments are not disturbed by unwelcome and unpleasant ceremonies, their funerals cost them nothing, and no one starts lawsuits over their
wills.

—Voltaire

religion death animals theology funerals ceremony

The dying must often feel this way—steaming along just fine, while on ahead someone has torn up the rails.

—Annie Dillard

death feelings

It kills me sometimes, how people die.

—Markus Zusak

death irony

Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, the only fact we have.

—James Baldwin

war reality beauty religion facts death blood

History

1 Jan 2016 Added
26 Oct 2026 Wording changed

Previous wording

We say that the hour of death cannot be forecast, but when we say this we imagine that hour as placed in an obscure and distant future. It never occurs to us that it has any connection with the day already begun or that death could arrive this same afternoon, this afternoon which is so