Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way Quotes

Only imagination and belief can differentiate from the rest certain objects, certain people, and can create an atmosphere.

...we need to bear in mind that our opinion of other people, our ties with friends or family, have only the semblance of fixity and are, in fact, as eternally fluid as the sea.

She was not yet dead. But I was already alone.

There is nothing like desire for obstructing any resemblance between what one says and what one has on one's mind.

Quite half of the human race was in tears.

He [Bloch] was one of those touchy, highly-strung people who cannot bear to have made a blunder, will not admit it to themselves, and whose whole day is ruined by it.

We forgive the crimes of individuals, but not their participation in a collective crime.

Dinner-parties bore us because our imagination is absent, and reading interests us because it is keeping us company.

Certainly, it is more reasonable to devote one's life to women than to postage stamps, old snuff-boxes, or even to paintings and statues.