There is not a woman in the world the possession of whom is as precious as that of the truths which she reveals to us by causing us to suffer.

Desire makes everything blossom; possession makes everything wither and fade.

Those whose suffering is due to love are, as we say of certain invalids, their own physicians.

In love, happiness is an abnormal state.

You know Balbec so well - do you have friends in the area?' I have friends wherever there are companies of trees, wounded but not vanquished, which huddle together with touching obstinacy to implore an inclement and pitiless sky.' That is not what I meant,' interrupted my father, as obstinate as the trees and as pitiless as the sky.

The disinterest [of my two great-aunts] in anything that had to do with high society was such that their sense of hearing ... put to rest its receptor organs and allowed them to suffer the true beginnings of atrophy.

Unkind people imagine themselves to be inflicting pain on someone equally unkind.