The bonds between ourselves and another person exist only in our minds. Memory as it… — Marcel Proust

The bonds between ourselves and another person exist only in our minds. Memory as it grows fainter loosens them, and notwithstanding the illusion by which we want to be duped and which, out of love, friendship, politeness, deference, duty, we dupe other people, we exist alone. Man is the creature who cannot escape from himself, who knows other people only in himself, and when he asserts the contrary, he is lying.

In the original French

Les liens entre un être et nous n'existent que dans notre pensée. La mémoire en s'affaiblissant les relâche, et malgré l'illusion dont nous voudrions être dupes, et dont par amour, par amitié, par politesse, par respect humain, par devoir, nous dupons les autres, nous existons seuls. L'homme est l'être qui ne peut sortir de soi, qui ne connaît les autres qu'en soi, et, en disant le contraire, ment.

In Search of Lost Time · 1922
★ 6.1
Provenance
Current citation
Proust, Marcel. The Fugitive, edited and translated by Peter Collier. Penguin Classics, 2021.
Original citation
Proust, Marcel. Albertine disparue [Albertine Gone]. Paris: Gallimard, 1927.

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