It has been said that beauty is a promise of happiness. Conversely, the possibility of pleasure can be a beginning of beauty.

A woman one loves rarely suffices for all our needs, so we deceive her with another whom we do not love.

An hour is not merely an hour, it is a vase full of scents and sounds and projects and climates.

The soldier is convinced that a certain indefinitely extendable time period is accorded him before he is killed, the burglar before he is caught, men in general, before they must die. That is the amulet which preserves individuals — and sometimes populations — not from danger, but from the fear of danger, in reality from the belief in danger, which in some cases allows them to brave it without being brave. Such a confidence, just as unfounded, supports the lover who counts on a reconciliation, a letter.

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

She poured out Swann's tea, inquired "Lemon or cream?" and, on his answering "Cream, please," said to him with a laugh: "A cloud!" And as he pronounced it excellent, "You see, I know just how you like it." This tea had indeed seemed to Swann, just as it seemed to her; something precious, and love has such a need to find some justification for itself, some guarantee of duration, in pleasures which without it would have no existence and must cease with its passing.

Let us be grateful to people who make us happy.