M. de Charlus persisted in not replying. I thought I could see a smile flicker about his lips: the smile of the man who looks down from a great height on the characters and manners of lesser men.

With women who do not love us, as with the "dear departed, " the knowledge that there is no hope left does not prevent us from continuing to wait.

...but the loss of a memory, like the omission of a phrase during reading, rather than making for uncertainty, can lead to a premature certainty.

It is a mistake, " Labruyère tells us, "to be in love without an ample fortune.

...for each of us sees clarity only in those ideas which have the same degree of confusion as his own.

We imagine always when we speak that it is our own ears, our own mind, that are listening.

Was the happiness of knowing these girls really unattainable? It would certainly not have been the first happiness of that sort which I had abandoned all hope of ever enjoying?

When you're in God's will, even when you miss, you will hit.

I don't know what happiness is. I don't know what sweet caress is. Still, I'm always laughing like a clown.

It is when our budding hopes are nipped beyond recovery by some rough wind, that we are the most disposed to picture to ourselves what flowers they might have borne, if they had flourished . . .

Our life is frittered away by detail... simplify, simplify.

I have never met an aggressive person who wasn’t a fearful person.

he was watching me and when our eyes met, i had no fan to cover my face, no way to hid my feelings. i was desperate for him, and he could see it, all the way in me.

Men should spend less time with guns and more time in childbirth.

Do you want to be right, or do you want to be happy? Forgive yourself and stop punishing yourself.

A good deed hidden in silence dies.

A signal is comprehended if it serves to make us notice the object or situation it bespeaks. A symbol is understood when we conceive the idea it presents.