Share & Save
Meaning
This reads as an argument that ease is not always the best teacher. Happiness is presented as good for the body, while sorrow is cast as the condition that stretches thought, deepens insight, and trains the mind through strain. It lands when someone is trying to understand why painful experience can sharpen judgment, even if it is not something anyone would choose.
When It Was Said
Not documented yet.
Who It Was Said To
Not documented yet.
Historical Context
Not documented yet.
Source
Not documented yet.
Original Language & Translation
Originally said in English.
Did They Really Say It?
Not documented yet.
Did You Know?
Not documented yet.
About Marcel Proust
French novelist, literary critic, and essayist
Marcel Proust was a French novelist, literary critic, and essayist. He is best known for À la recherche du temps perdu, the seven-volume novel published between 1913 and 1927. That work runs to around 1.25 million words and secured his place among the most influential writers of the twentieth century, according to critics and fellow authors. His reputation rests above all on this long, closely observed novel and on his wider influence on modern literature.
More from Marcel Proust (262 quotes) →More quotes by Marcel Proust
- “This was to say, however, that she did not long, at times, for some even greater variation, that she did not…”Marcel Proust
- “My destination is no longer a place, rather a new way of seeing.”Marcel Proust
- “And then, gradually, the memory of her would fade away, I had forgotten the girl of my dream.”Marcel Proust
- “... rejoicing in a peace which brings only an increase of anxiety,...”Marcel Proust
More Sympathy quotes
- “I belong to a nation which over the past centuries has experienced many hardships and reverses. The world rea…”Lech Walesa
- “Enlarged sympathy with children was one of the chief contributions made by the Victorian English to real civi…”George Macaulay Trevelyan
- “I became convinced that I was being watched.Because self was still leaking everywhere, a part of me began to…”Olivia Sudjic
Grief: more sayings
- “To better handle grief, become the passenger, not the driver.”Todd Stocker
- “Apparently there were seven stages of grief but that was a neat way of putting it. Grief was messy and didn't…”Emily Gale
- “Being in grief, it turns out, is not unlike being in love. In both states, the imagination's entirely occupie…”Mark Doty
READ THE SOURCE
Books by Marcel Proust
Du côté de chez Swann
2006
Le Côté de Guermantes
1997
À l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs
1996
Sodome et Gomorrhe
2005
La Prisonnière
2017