I feel infinite sadness at seeing how few people are genuinely kind.

When Jean and his mother left Etreuilles, Monsieur Sureau had gathered for them great boxfuls of hawthorn and of snowballs which Madame Santeuil had not the courage to refuse. But, as soon as Jean's uncle had gone home, she threw them away, saying that they already had more than enough in the way of luggage. And then Jean cried because he had been separated from the darling creatures which he would have liked to take with him to Paris, and because of his mother's naughtiness.

Sadness had reigned in undisputed sovereignty over his shadowed childhood.

My only consolation when I am really sad is to love and to be loved.

همه‌ی این جدایی‌ها مرا ناخواسته به فکر آنچه جبران‌ناپذیر بود و روزی فرامی‌رسید می‌انداخت، هرچند که آن زمان هرگز جدی به امکان زنده‌ماندنِ خودم پس از مرگ مادرم فکر نکرده‌بودم. عزمم این بود که یک دقیقه از مرگ مادرم نگذشته خودم را بکشم. بعداً، غیبت مادرم چیزهایی از این تلخ‌تر به من آموخت، آموخت که آدم به غیبت عادت می‌کند، بزرگ‌ترین نقصانِ خویشتن و بزرگ‌ترین رنج این است که حس کنی از غیبت رنج نمی‌کشی.

My grandmother had a love which found in me so totally its complement, its goal, its constant lodestar, that the genius of great men, all the genius that might ever have existed from the beginning of the world, would have been less precious to my grandmother than a single one of my defects.