I wished to see storms only on those coasts where they raged with most violence.

For one cannot change, that is to say become another person, while continuing to acquiesce to the feelings of the person one no longer is.

... in love, barriers cannot be destroyed from the outside by the one to whom the cause despair, no matter what he does; and it isonly when he is no longer concerned with them that, suddenly, as a result of work coming from elsewhere, accomplished within the one who did not love him, these barriers, formerly attacked without success, fall futilely.

There are people whose faces assume an unaccustomed beauty and majesty the moment they cease to look out of their eyes.

The sight of the little madeleine had recalled nothing to my mind before I tasted it...

We have such numerous interests in our lives that it is not uncommon, on a single occasion, for the foundations of a happiness that does not yet exist to be laid down alongside the intensification of a grief from which we are still suffering.

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.