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“In spite of myself, still pursued in my jealousy by the memory of Saint-Loup’s relations with “Rachel when of the Lord” and of those of Swann with Odette, I was too given to believing that the moment I was in love I could not be loved, and that self-interest alone could attach a woman to me. It was no doubt foolish to judge Albertine in terms of Odette and Rachel. But it was not her, it was me; it was the sentiments I might inspire that my jealousy caused me to underestimate. And of this—perhaps erroneous—judgment were no doubt born many of the misfortunes that would befall us.”
― Sodom and Gomorrah
― Sodom and Gomorrah
“I should have left that evening without ever seeing her again. I had a presentiment from then on that in a love that is not shared—or, in other words, in love, for there are people for whom there is no shared love—all we can taste of happiness is that simulacrum which had been granted me at one of those unique moments when a woman’s kindness, or her caprice, or chance applies to our desires, in a perfect coincidence, the same words and the same actions as if we had truly been loved.”
― Sodom and Gomorrah
― Sodom and Gomorrah
“It is certain that she had represented something quite different for me in Balbec. But even when we consider it insufficient at the time, our intimacy with the woman we love creates between her and us, despite its painful shortcomings, social ties that outlast our love and even the memory of that love. Then, in the woman who is now no more to us than a means, a path toward others, we are just as astonished and amused to discover in our memory the original special appeal of her name for the other being we once were, as if, after giving a cabman an address on the Boulevard des Capucines or on the rue du Bac, thinking only of the person we are going to see there, we were to remind ourselves that these names were once those of the Capuchin nuns whose convent stood there and of the ferry across the Seine.”
― The Guermantes Way
― The Guermantes Way
“We get anxious, and it is sometimes long after the hour of danger, which a subsequent distraction has made us forget, that we remember our anxiety.”
― Sodom and Gomorrah
― Sodom and Gomorrah
“But these recurrences of desire force us to reflect that, if we wanted to meet these girls again with the same pleasure, we should have also to go back to the year in question, which has since been followed by ten others, in the course of which the girl has faded. We can sometimes find a person again, but not abolish time. All this up until that unforeseen day, sad as a winter’s night, when we are no longer seeking that particular girl, or any other, and when to find one would alarm us even. For we no longer feel we have sufficient attractions to please, or the strength to love. Not, of course, that we are, in the true sense of the word, impotent. So far as love is concerned, we would love more than ever. But we feel that it is too great an undertaking for the little strength that we preserve. Our eternal rest has already introduced intervals, in which we cannot go out, cannot speak.”
― Sodom and Gomorrah
― Sodom and Gomorrah
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Igor’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Igor’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
930 books
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302 friends
390 books
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19 friends
1,036 books
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33 friends
126 books
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5 friends
87 books
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5 friends
299 books
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15 friends
10 books
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4 friends
323 books
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5 friends
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