"When all was said, the stories I had heard at Mme de Guermantes's, very different in this respect from what I had felt in the case of the hawthorns,..." more...
"But as these faces, different in this respect from those of the party around me, were not overlaid for me by any residue of physical experience or..." more...
"Old friends of M. and Mme Guermantes came in to see them after dinner, 'with the tooth-picks' as Mme Swann would have said, without being expected,..." more...
"'Don't listen to him, Ma'am, he's having you on; she's as stupid as a (h'm) goose,' came in a loud and husky voice from Mme de Guermantes, who, a..." more...
"A certainty of taste in the domain not of aesthetics but of behaviour, which when he was faced by a novel combination of circumstances enabled the..." more...
"If I had sought to reproduce in a piece of writing the material in which my most insignificant memories of Rivebelle appeared to me to be carved, I..." more...
"Weary, resigned, occupied for several hours still with its immemorial task, the grey day stitched its shimmering needlework of light and shade, and..." more...
"But in order that I should not be disappointed by the words that I should hear uttered by a person who called herself Mme de Guermantes, even if I..." more...
"But I responded to her complaints only with a languid smile; all the more indifferent to these predictions in that whatever happened in would be..." more...
"One morning, after several weeks of showers and storms, I heard in my chimney—instead of the formless, elastic, sombre wind which stirred in..." more...
"When I had finished sleeping, tempted by the sunlit sky but held back by the chill of those last autumn mornings, so luminous and so cold, which..." more...
"I walked down a long gallery which displayed to me successively all that it had to offer me if I could not sleep, an armchair placed in a corner, a..." more...
"And the room was prolonged in depth by two closets as wide as itself, one of which had hanging from its wall, to scent the occasion on which one had..." more...
"The man who has become completely deaf cannot even heat a pan of milk by his bedside without having to keep an eye open to watch, on the tilted lid,..." more...
"I gazed on this momentary apotheosis with a perturbation which was partly soothed by feeling that I myself was unknown to the Immortals; the Duchess..." more...
"Perhaps Mme de Guermantes would smile next day when she referred to the headdress, a little too complicated, which the Princess had worn, but..." more...
"Within the boundaries of their domain, however, the radiant daughters of the sea were constantly turning round to smile up at the bearded tritons..." more...
"Gradually, however, as the performance went on, their vaguely human forms detached themselves languidly one after the other from the depths of the..." more...
"Then in the depths of this name the castle mirrored in its lake had faded, and what now became apparent to me, surrounding Mme de Guermantes as her..." more...
"A two-dimensional castle, no more indeed than a strip of orange light, from the summit of which the lord and his lady disposed of the lives and..." more...
"But even apart from rare moments such as these, in which suddenly we feel the original entity quiver and resume its form, carve itself out of..." more...
"And the name Guermantes of those days is also like one of those little balloons which have been filled with oxygen or some other gas; when I come to..." more...
"The shy mimosa opened at his glance; the spiky maguey drooped at his touch, its barbs turned soft and pliant." -Tintin in the New World by..." more...
"By and by, after a few years, Mack and Raiss let me share in the profits in my district, a tiny share, but enough to give me some surplus income,..." more...
"The Americas were my district, a territory where you made a pile of money in a month of sweat and lost it in a night of gambling and women, where..." more...
"Perhaps this new Viennese science would explain my shirking of a higher education as a revenge against my hypereducated parents, whom by this stage..." more...
"I suppose I passed my youth in the amateur fashion common to certain youths born to a gracious life, to the luxury, calm, and voluptuousness of my..." more...
"Once, in the middle of dessert, he attacked Pimento with a carving knife he had tucked away in his belt. 'Avast! Pirates larboard. Repel boarders,'..." more...
"Things for us here are elemental. We require the elimination of the latifundia and the ownership of huge estates by absentee landlords; we must..." more...
"... she put on a pink meal — ham au Vertus in aspic, koulibiaca of salmon in aurora sauce, wild duck with vineyard peach, pink champagne, etc...." more...
"The lower level of the rack holds five bottles of fruit brandies: kirsch, apricot, quetsch, plum, raspberry." -- Life: A User's Manual by Georges..." more...
"He wanted, so he said, to sort the labels into order, but it was very difficult: of course, there was chronological order, but he found it poor,..." more...
"And so it was not with the pleasure which otherwise I should doubtless have felt that I suddenly discerned at my feet, crouching among the rocks for..." more...
"Now in the little lounge what is left is what remains when there's nothing left: flies, for instance, or advertising bumph slipped under the door by..." more...
"The walls are covered in hessian, once blue, now returned to an almost colourless condition except in the places where the furniture and the..." more...
"In all the local cafés he gave out his visiting card, which described him as "Head of Practical Services at the Ecole Pyrotechnique," and he..." more...
"Some believed it was a monastery built by two monks to escape from the Moors; other saw it as a Visigoth citadel; still others held it to be a..." more...
"Beaumont belonged to that school of medievalists which described itself as "materialist" and which prompted a professor of the history of religion,..." more...
"From the property angle, the deal is a good one, the area is decent, the façade is of ashlar, the staircase is OK despite the agedness of the..." more...
"The woman is looking at a plan held in her left hand. It's just a sheet of paper, whose still visible creases attest to its having been folded in..." more...
"A woman of about forty is climbing the stairs; she is wearing a long imitation-leather raincoat and on her head a kind of felt hat shaped like a <a..." more...
"And so it was not with the pleasure which otherwise I should doubtless have felt that I suddenly discerned at my feet, crouching among the rocks for..." more...
"And it's the same with women's clothes on board a yacht; what's really charming are those light garments, uniformly white, cotton or linen or..." more...
"The ships were massive, built like pieces of architecture, and seemed almost amphibious, like lesser Venices set in the heart of the greater, when,..." more...
"The blinds were closed almost everywhere round the studio, which was fairly cool and, except in one place where daylight laid against the wall its..." more...
"But her words remained so indistinct and the sound which was all that I caught was prolonged so sweetly and seemed to me so musical that it was as..." more...
"Often, since even after dinner there might still be a little light left outside, this long corridor was left unlighted, and, skirted by the trees..." more...
"A few hours later, during dinner, which, naturally, was served in the dining-room, the lights would be turned on, even when it was still quite light..." more...
"The result of which, apart from ubiquitous draughts, was sudden and intermittent bursts of sunshine, a dazzling and changeable light that made it..." more...
"I had more pleasure on the evenings when a ship, absorbed and liquefied by the horizon, appeared so much the same colour as its background, as in an..." more...
"Close to the shore, patches of vapour, soot-black but with the burnish and consistency of agate, visibly solid and palpable, were trying to rise..." more...
"Presently the days grew shorter and at the moment when I entered the room the violet sky seemed branded with the stiff, geometrical, fleeting,..." more...
"For what princely traveller, sojourning here incognito, could they be intended, those plums, glaucous, luminous and spherical as was at that..." more...
"It brightened; the sky turned to a glowing pink which I strove, glueing my eyes to the window, to see more clearly, for I felt that it was related..." more...
"And I realised that it was for herself that she obeyed these canons in accordance with which she dressed, as though yielding to a superior wisdom..." more...
"Suddenly, on the gravelled path, unhurrying, cool, luxuriant, Mme Swann would appear, blossoming out in a costume which was never twice the same but..." more...
"It was enough to fill me with longing for country scenes that, overhanging the loose snowdrifts of the muff in which Mme Swann kept her hands, the..." more...
"When spring arrived, and with it the cold weather, during an icy Lent and the hailstorms of Holy Week, as Mme Swann declared that it was freezing in..." more...
"And finally, beyond the winter-garden, through the various kinds of arborescence which from the street made the lighted window appear like the glass..." more...
"And yet one did not find in Bergotte's speech a certain luminosity which in his books, as in those of some other writers, often modified in the..." more...
"For years I had believed that the notion of going to Mme Swann's was a vague, chimerical dream to which I should never attain; after I had spent a..." more...
"And not only does one not grasp at once and remember works that are truly rare, but even within those works (as happened to me in the case of..." more...
"I encountered no one at first but a footman who, after leading me through several large drawing-rooms, showed me into one that was quite small,..." more...
"Even in Bergotte's books, all those Chinese puzzles of form, all those subtleties of a deliquescent mandarin seem to me to be quite futile." --..." more...
"To add his own contribution to the pleasures of the repast, M. de Norpois entertained us with a number of the stories with which he was in the habit..." more...
"I felt it in the little square that lay in front of the theatre, in which, in two-hours' time, the bare boughs of the chestnut-trees would gleam..." more...
"As I later discovered, St. Oswald's specialized in architectural sadism—even the new science lab (pride of the establishment) featured brown..." more...
"They made a great pet of the creature—naturally, it was called Fiddle. Though it remained bad-tempered, captious, and unfriendly, it never..." more...
"In place of the abstract expressions 'the time when I was happy,' 'the time when I was loved,' which he had often used before then without suffering..." more...
"Whereas upon that pestilential but longed-for staircase to the old dressmaker's, since there was no other, no service stair in the building, one saw..." more...
"But he was so shy in approaching her that, after this evening which had begun by his arranging her cattleyas and had ended in her complete..." more...
"But when her footman came into the room bringing, one after another, the innumerable lamps which (contained, mostly, in porcelain vases) burned..." more...
"And it had been a source of keen pleasure to him when, below the delicate line of the violin-part, slender but robust, compact and commanding, he..." more...
"Elsewhere a corner seemed to be reserved for the commoner kinds of lily, of a neat pink or white like rocket-flowers, washed clean like porcelain..." more...
"I knew that Mlle Swann used often to go and spend a few days at Laon; for all that it was many miles away, the distance was counterbalanced by the..." more...
"And so it was that, at the foot of the path which led down to the artificial lake, there might be seen, in its two tiers woven of forget-me-nots and..." more...
"'There are tints in the clouds this evening, violets and blues, which are very beautiful, are they not, my friend' he said to my father, 'a blue,..." more...
