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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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His [Morel's] nature was really like a sheet of paper that has been folded so often in every direction that it is impossible to straighten it out.

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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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It was like every attitude or action which reveals a man's deep and hidden character; they bear no relation to what he has previously said, and we can...more

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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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... the cattleyas especially (these being, with chrysanthemums, her favourite flowers), because they had the supreme merit of not looking in the least...more

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To such an extent does passion manifest itself in us as a temporary and distinct character, which not only takes the place of our normal character but...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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Even when she had to make some one a present of the kind called 'useful,' when she had to give an armchair or some table-silver or a walking-stick, sh...more

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I never allow myself to be influenced in the smallest degree either by atmospheric disturbances or by the arbitrary divisions of what is known as Time...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