John

“The variations of the Duchess's judgment spared no one, except her
husband. He alone had never been in love with her, in him she had
always felt an iron character, indifferent to the caprices that she
displayed, contemptuous of her beauty, violent, of a will that would
never bend, the sort under which alone nervous people can find
tranquillity.”
― Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way

“You're as strong as the Pont Neuf. You'll live to bury us all!”
― Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way

“I wished to see storms only on those coasts where they raged with most violence...”
― Marcel Proust, Within a Budding Grove

“Most timidities have such secret compensations and Miss Bart was discerning enough to know that the inner vanity is generally in proportion to the outer self depreciation.”
― Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth