In a separation it is the one who is not really in love who says the more tender things.

More from "The Captive," vol. 10, pt. 2, ch. 3, Remembrance of Things Past (1923), trans. by Ronald Cortie and Colette Cortie (1988).

• A change in the weather is sufficient to recreate the world and ourselves.
• Everything great in the world comes from neurotics. They alone have founded our religions and composed our masterpieces.
• Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.
• No exile at the South Pole or on the summit of Mont Blanc separates us more effectively from others than the practice of a hidden vice.
• People who are not in love fail to understand how an intelligent man can suffer because of a very ordinary woman. This is like being surprised that anyone should be stricken with cholera because of a creature so insignificant as the common bacillus.
• That translucent alabaster of our memories.