An hour or so later he received a note from Odette. Swann had left his cigarette case at her house. "If only," she wrote, "you had also forgotten your heart! I should never have let you have it back.

Time passes, and little by little everything that we have spoken in falsehood becomes true.

Human altruism which is not egoism, is sterile.

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

After a certain age, the more one becomes oneself, the more obvious one's family traits become.

Everything we think of as great has come to us from neurotics. It is they and they alone who found religions and create great works of art. The world will never realize how much it owes to them and what they have suffered in order to bestow their gifts on it.

Habit is a second nature which prevents us from knowing the first, of which it has neither the cruelties nor the enchantments.