People do not die for us immediately, but remain bathed in a sort of aura of life which bears no relation to true immortality but through which they … - Marcel Proust

At the start of a new love as its ending, we are not exclusively attached to the object of that love, but rather the desire to love from which it will presently arise (and, later on, the memory it leaves behind) wanders voluptuously through a zone of interchangeable charms — simply natural charms, it may be, gratification of appetite, enjoyment of one's surroundings — which are harmonious enough for it not to feel at a loss in the presence of any one of them.

En cuanto somos desdichados, nos volvemos morales.

The facts of life do not penetrate to the sphere in which our beliefs are cherished; they did not engender those beliefs, and they are powerless to destroy them; they can inflict on them continual blows of contradiction and disproof without weakening them; and an avalanche of miseries and maladies succeeding one another without interruption in the bosom of a family will not make it lose faith in either the clemency of its God or the capacity of its physician.