Marcel Proust, Swann's Way Quotes

... I experienced, suddenly, that special pleasure, which bore no resemblance to any other...

... novels contained something inexpressibly delicious.

And if she had appeared, would I have dared to speak to her?

... the kiss, the bodily surrender which would seem natural and but moderately attractive...

the comfort of reclusion, the poetry of hibernation

... I should have been struck down by the despair a young lover feels who has sworn lifelong fidelity, when a friend speaks to him of the other mistresses he will have in time to come.

An excellent but an eccentric man in whom the least little thing would, it seemed, often check the flow of his spirits and divert the current of his thoughts.

I never allow myself to be influenced in the smallest degree either by atmospheric disturbances or by the arbitrary divisions of what is known as Time.

... it was with an unusual intensity of pleasure, a pleasure destined to have a lasting effect upon his character and conduct...

... the objects which we admire have no absolute value in themselves...

After luncheon the sun, conscious that it was Saturday, would blaze an hour longer in the zenith, ...

... it had arrested for all eternity the moment which it had been trying to make pass more quickly.

And what little she allowed herself to say was said in a strained tone, in which her ingrained timidity paralysed her tendency to freedom and audacity of speech.

Prosperity of wicked men runs like a torrent past, and soon is spent.

Even from the point of view of coquetry, pure and simple, " he had told her, "can't you see how much of your attraction you throw away when you stoop to lying?

... the serpent hissing between the lips of Envy is so huge, and so completely fills her wide-opened mouth that the muscles of her face are strained and contorted, ...

... the reigns of the kings and queens who are portrayed as kneeling with clasped hands in the windows of churches, were stained by oppression and bloodshed.

... Error, by force of contrast, enhances the triumph of Truth...

Her [Odette's] eyes were beautiful, but so large they seemed to droop beneath their own weight, strained the rest of her face and always made her appear unwell or in a bad mood.

To determine not to think of it was but to think of it still, to suffer from it still.

... sterile, splendid torture of understanding and loving...

that profit which good things bestowed on us by teaching to seek pleasure elsewhere than in the barren satisfaction of worldly wealth.

And then, gradually, the memory of her would fade away, I had forgotten the girl of my dream.

What criterion ought one to adopt to judge one's fellows? After all, there was not a single person he knew who might not, in certain circumstances, prove capable of a shameful action.

Presently, one after another, like shyly hopping sparrows, her friends arrived, black against the snow.

One felt that in her renunciation of life she had deliberately abandoned those places in which she might at least have been able to see the man she loved, for others where he had never trod.

She [Mme des Laumes] belonged to that half of the human race in whom the curiosity the other half feels about the people it does not know is replaced by an interest in the people it does.

... rejoicing in a peace which brings only an increase of anxiety, ...

... the courage of one's opinions is always a form of calculating cowardice in the eyes of the 'other side'...

Why did you not forget your heart also? I should never have let you have that back." ...

... the idea that 'Life' contains situations more interesting and more romantic than all the romances ever written.

... there was no need for him to hasten towards the attainment of a happiness already captured and held in a safe place, which would not escape his grasp again.

When one feels oneself smitten by love for a woman, one ought to say to oneself, “What are her surroundings? What has been her life? All one’s future happiness lies in the answer.