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... Odette seemed a fascinating and desirable woman, the attraction which her body held for him had aroused a painful longing to secure the absolute m...more

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A 'sadist' of her kind is an artist in evil, which a wholly wicked person could not be...

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All the objects which he contemplated with as much curiosity and admiration as gratitude, for if, in absorbing his dreams, they had delivered him from...more

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... it was with an unusual intensity of pleasure, a pleasure destined to have a lasting effect upon his character and conduct...

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My dears, laugh at me if you like; it is not conventionally beautiful, but there is something in its quaint old face which pleases me. If it could pla...more

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... it had arrested for all eternity the moment which it had been trying to make pass more quickly.

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Among all the methods by which love is brought into being, among all the agents which disseminate that blessed bane, there are few so efficacious as t...more

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Swann, with that almost arrogant charity of a man of the world who, amid the dissolution of all his own moral prejudices, finds in another's shame mer...more

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But the lies which Odette ordinarily told were less innocent, and served to prevent discoveries which might have involved her in the most terrible dif...more

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... they imagine that the life they are obliged to lead is not that for which they are really fitted, and they bring to their regular occupations eith...more

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He went farther; agonised by the reflection, at the moment when it passed by him, so near and yet so infinitely remote, that, while it was addressed t...more

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At the moment when, ordinarily, there was still an hour to be lived through before meal-time sounded, we would all know that in a few seconds we shoul...more

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A 'real' person, profoundly as we may sympathise with him, is in a great measure perceptible only through our senses, that is to say, he remains opaqu...more

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... there was no need for him to hasten towards the attainment of a happiness already captured and held in a safe place, which would not escape his gr...more

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The flowers which played then among the grass, the water which rippled past in the sunshine, the whole landscape which served as environment to their ...more