A mixture of admiration and pity is one of the surest recipes for affection.

And at once I fell in love with her, for if it is sometimes enough to make us love a woman that she should look on us with contempt, as I supposed Mlle Swann to have done, and that we should think that she can never be ours, sometimes, too, it is enough that she should look on us kindly, as Mme de Guermantes was doing, and that we should think of her as almost ours already.

As for the virtuous poor, one can pity them, of course, but one cannot possibly admire them

Friends and acquaintances are the surest passport to fortune.

Man ceased to be an ape, vanquished the ape, on the day the first book was written.

It has always appeared to me, that there is so much to be done in this world, that all self-inflicted suffering which cannot be turned to good account for others, is a loss - a loss, if you may so express it, to the spiritual world.