A work in which there are theories is like an object which still has its price-tag on.

The beauty of images lies behind things, the beauty of ideas in front of them.

I would show you this quality in all the writers whose works you read while I’m asleep, I would show you the same identity as in Vinteuil. These key-phrases, which you are beginning to recognise...

But when from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, taste and smell alone, more fragile but more enduring, more unsubstantial, more persistent, more faithful,...

From the pavement, I could see the window of Albertine’s room, that window, formerly quite black, at night, when she was not staying in the house, which the electric light inside, dissected by the slats...

And my grandmother had bought them in preference to other books, just as she would have preferred to take a house that had a gothic dovecot, or some other such piece of antiquity as would...

When he spoke, his words came with a confusion which was delightful to hear because one felt that it indicated not so much a defect in his speech as a quality of his soul, as...

Ele só teve um momento de frieza, com o Dr. Cottard: vendo-o piscar o olho e sorrir-lhe com um ar ambíguo antes que se tivessem falado (mímica que Cottard chamava de “deixar fluir”), Swann acreditou...

He could see her, but dared not remain for fear of annoying her by seeming to be spying upon the pleasures which she tasted in other company, pleasures which – while he drove home in...

…pretention is very close to stupidity and that simplicity has a less visible but still gratifying aspect.

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

… even in his most artificial creations, nature is the material upon which man has to work; certain spots will persist in remaining surrounded by the vassals of their own special sovereignty, and will raise...

He had, indeed, one of those advantages which men who had lived and moved in the world enjoy over others, even men of intelligence and refinement, who have never gone into society, namely that they...

Will it ultimately reach the clear surface of my consciousness, this memory, this old, dead moment which the magnetism of an identical moment has travelled so far to importune, to disturb, to raise up out...

What we have not had to decipher, to elucidate by our own efforts, what was clear before we looked at it, is not ours. From ourselves comes only that which we drag forth from the...

… the kiss, the bodily surrender which would seem natural and but moderately attractive…

There is no need, in order to explain three-quarters of the opinions held about people, to go so far as a love that has been spurned or an exclusion from political power. Our judgment remains...

But the lies which Odette ordinarily told were less innocent, and served to prevent discoveries which might have involved her in the most terrible difficulties with one or another of her friends. And so, when...

What agony he suffered as he watched that light, in whose golden atmosphere were moving, behind the closed sash, the unseen and detested pair, as he listened to that murmur which revealed the presence of...

He was one of that class of men who, apart from a scientific career in which they may well have proved brilliantly successful, have acquired an entirely different kind of culture, literary or artistic, for...

Reading is at the threshold of the spiritual life; it can introduce us to it. It does not constitute it … There are certain cases of spiritual depression in which reading can become a sort...

Did they like us?”—nor is there the anxiety of being forgotten because of displacement by someone else. All such agitating thoughts expire as we enter the pure and calm friendship of reading.

I came to recognise that, apart from her [Françoise’s] own kinsfolk, the sufferings of humanity inspired in her a pity which increased in direct ratio to the distance separating the sufferers from herself.

Having a body is in itself the greatest threat to the mind… The body encloses the mind in a fortress; before long the mind is besieged on all sides, and in the end the mind...

Or she would look at him with a sullen expression, once again he would see before him a face worthy of figuring in Botticelli’s Life of Moses, he would place her in it, he would...

When nothing else subsists from the past, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered…the smell and taste of things remain poised a long time, like souls…bearing resiliently, on tiny and...

Because happiness alone is good for the body; whereas sorrow develops the strength of the mind.

…As for all the little people who call themselves Marquis de Cambremerde or de Gotoblazes, there is no difference between them and the humblest rookie in your regiment. Whether you go and do wee-wee at...

Bodily passion, which has been so unjustly decried, compels its victims to display every vestige that is in them of unselfishness and generosity, and so effectively that they shine resplendent in the eyes of all...

Let an illness, a duel, a runaway horse make us see death face to face, and how richly we should have enjoyed the life of pleasure, the travels in unknown lands, which are about to...

As long as reading is for us the instigator whose magic keys have opened the door to those dwelling-places deep within us that we would not have known how to enter, its role in our...

To see how pretty an old woman once was, it is not enough just to look at each feature; they must be translated.

Now I could appreciate the merits of a broad, poetical, powerful interpretation, or rather it was to this that those epithets were conventionally applied, but only as we give the names of Mars, Venus, Saturn...

So we don’t believe that life is beautiful because we don’t recall it but if we get a whiff of a long-forgotten smell we are suddenly intoxicated and similarly we think we no longer love...

It is always thus, impelled by a state of mind which is destined not to last, we make our irrevocable decisions

We do not include the pleasures we enjoy in sleep in the inventory of the pleasures we have experienced in the course of our existence.

And what little she allowed herself to say was said in a strained tone, in which her ingrained timidity paralysed her tendency to freedom and audacity of speech.

As soon as one is unhappy one becomes moral.

She was not yet dead. But I was already alone.

The Princess of Parma was a Courvoisier in that she was incapable of innovation in social matters, but unlike the Courvoisiers in that the surprises the Duchesse de Guermantes perpetually held in store for her...

Love is a striking example of how little reality means to us.

It has since struck me as one of the most touching aspects of the part played in life by these idle, painstaking women that they devote all their generosity, all their talent, their transferable dreams...

What had to move – a leaf of the chestnut tree, for instance – moved.

… rejoicing in a peace which brings only an increase of anxiety,…

When we have passed a certain age, the soul of the child that we were and the souls of the dead from whom we sprang come and shower upon us their riches and their spells,...

I loved her [Gilberte]; I was sorry not to have had the time and the inspiration to insult her, to hurt her, to force her to keep some memory of me. I thought her so...

In the V-shaped opening of her crape bodice Mlle. Vinteuil felt the sting of her friend’s sudden kiss;…

Apenas discerni que repetir o que toda a gente pensava não era em política um sinal de inferioridade, mas de superioridade.

My body, still too heavy with sleep to move…

At that time, he was satisfying a sensual curiosity by experiencing the pleasures of people who live for love. He had believed he could stop there, that he would not be obliged to learn their...