Sadists of Mlle Vinteuil's sort are creatures so purely sentimental, so naturally virtuous, that even sensual pleasure appears to them as something bad, the prerogative of the wicked. And when they allow themselves for a moment to enjoy it they endeavour to impersonate, to identify with, the wicked, and to make their partners do likewise, in order to gain the momentary illusion of having escaped beyond the control of their own gentle and scrupulous natures into the inhuman world of pleasure. Marcel Proust
Some Similar Quotes
  1. Fuck! Is one expected to be a gentleman when one is stiff? - Marquis De Sade

  2. Pedersen was always wooing her. Sometimes he was gracious and kind, but at other times when his failure wearied him he would be cruel and sardonic, with a suggestive tongue whose vice would have scourged her were it not that Marie was impervious, or too... - A.E. Coppard

  3. Look at us. We build giant highways and murderously fast cars for killing each other and committing suicide. Instead of bomb shelters we construct gigantic frail glass buildings all over Manhattan at Ground Zero, a thousand feet high, open to the sky, life a woman... - Herman Wouk

  4. Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them -- in order that the reader may see what they are made of."[ From the preface.] - Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

  5. The blessed in the kingdom of heaven will see the punishments of the damned, in order that their bliss be more delightful for them. - Thomas Aquinas

More Quotes By Marcel Proust
  1. Love is a striking example of how little reality means to us.

  2. Now there is one thing I can tell you: you will enjoy certain pleasures you would not fathom now. When you still had your mother you often thought of the days when you would have her no longer. Now you will often think of days...

  3. My destination is no longer a place, rather a new way of seeing.

  4. People do not die for us immediately, but remain bathed in a sort of aura oflife which bears no relation to true immortality but through which theycontinue to occupy our thoughts in the same way as when they were alive. Itis as though they were...

  5. One says the things which one feels the need to say, and which the other will not understand: one speaks for oneself alone.

Related Topics