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

For we are not as faithful to the being we have most loved as we are to ourselves and sooner or later we forget her — since that is one of our characteristics — so as to start loving another.

A cathedral, a wave of a storm, a dancer's leap, never turn out to be as high as we had hoped.

Ainsi notre cœur change, dans la vie, et c’est la pire douleur; mais nous ne la connaissons que dans la lecture, en imagination: dans la réalité il change, comme certains phénomènes de la nature se produisent, assez lentement pour que, si nous pouvons constater successivement chacun de ses états différents, en revanche la sensation même du changement nous soit épargnée.
Trans. The heart changes, and it is our worst sorrow; but we know it only through reading, through our imagination: in reality its alteration, like that of certain natural phenomena, is so gradual that, even if we are able to distinguish, successively, each of its different states, we are still spared the actual sensation of change.