... the idea that 'Life' contains situations more interesting and more romantic than all the romances ever written. - Marcel Proust

After luncheon the sun, conscious that it was Saturday, would blaze an hour longer in the zenith,...

After a certain age, and even if we develop in quite different ways, the more we become ourselves, the more our family traits are accentuated.

Compared with that of a great artist, the friendliness of a great nobleman, however charming it may be, seems like play-acting, like simulation. Saint-Loup sought to please; Elstir loved to give, to give himself. Everything he possessed, ideas, works, and the rest which he counted for far less, he would have given gladly to anyone who understood him. But, for lack of congenial company, he lived in an unsociable isolation which fashionable people call pose and ill-breeding, the authorities a recalcitrant spirit, his neighbours madness, his family selfishness and pride.