In Search of Lost Time [volumes 1 to 7]

by Marcel Proust

When Swann had said to me, in Paris one day when I felt particularly unwell: “You ought to go off to one of those glorious islands in the Pacific; you’d never come back again if you did.” I should have liked to answer: “But then I shall not see your daughter any more; I shall be living among people and things she has never seen.” And yet my better judgment whispered: “What difference can that make, since you are not going to be affected by it? When M. Swann tells you that you will not come back he means by that that you will not want to come back, and if you don’t want to that is because you will be happier out there.” For my judgment was aware that Habit — Habit which was even now setting to work to make me like this unfamiliar lodging, to change the position of the mirror, the shade of the curtains, to stop the clock — undertakes as well to make dear to us the companions whom at first we disliked, to give another appearance to their faces, to make attractive the sound of their voices, to modify the inclinations of their hearts.