Mme Inc Quotes & Sayings

She [Mme Sazerat] did not offer her hand, but smiled at my mother with vague melancholy as one smiles at a playmate from one's childhood, but with whom all connection has been severed because she has lived a debauched life, married a jailbird or, worse still, a divorced man. — Marcel Proust

While Elstir, at my request, went on painting, I wandered about in the half-light, stopping to examine first one picture, then another.
Most of those that covered the walls were not what I should chiefly have liked to see of his work, paintings in what an English art journal which lay about on the reading-room table in the Grand Hotel called his first and second manners, the mythological manner and the manner in which he shewed signs of Japanese influence, both admirably exemplified, the article said, in the collection of Mme. de Guermantes. Naturally enough, what he had in his studio were almost all seascapes done here, at Balbec. But I was able to discern from these that the charm of each of them lay in a sort of metamorphosis of the things represented in it, analogous to what in poetry we call metaphor, and that, if God the Father had created things by naming them, it was by taking away their names or giving them other names that Elstir created them anew. — Marcel Proust

When it comes to food, the obvious and expected approach for North Americans is to diet, which results in cravings, cheating, and shameful feelings. Diets seldom work for long since they go against the natural tendencies of the body, and in many cases the weight simply returns. But since dieting has been with us for decades now, it is accepted as the social norm. Mme Guiliano's approach, however, is to continue to eat, but to eat in a measured, slower way. This, she shows, achieves greater progress, a more stable, natural approach to weight management without cravings, and is also much easier. — Steve Prentice

Presently Arnaud folded the paper napkin, in the same careful way he always folded a table napkin, and said I ought to follow Chantal's suggestion and get a job in teaching a nursery school. (So Maman had mentioned that to Mme. Pons, too) I should teach until I had enough working time behind me to claim a pension. It would be good for me in my old age to have an income of my own. Anything could happen. He could be killed in a train crash or called up for a war. My father could easily be ruined in a lawsuit and die covered with debts. There were advantages to teaching, such as long holidays and reduced train fares.
"How long would it take?" I said. "Before I could stop teaching and get my pension."
"Thirty-five years," said Arnaud. "I'll ask my mother. She had no training, either, but she taught private classes. All you need is a decent background and some recommendations. — Mavis Gallant

Miss Edgeworth and Mme. de Stael have proved that there is no sex in style; and Mme. la Roche Jacqueline, and the Duchesse d'Angouleme have proved that there is no sex in courage. — Charles Caleb Colton

Writers make everybody nervous but we terrify Silly Service workers. Our apartments always look like a front for something, and no matter how carefully we tidy up for guests we always seem to miss the note card that says, "Margaret has to die soon." We own the kind of books that spies use to construct codes, like The Letters of Mme. de Sevigne, and we are the only people in the world who write oxymoron in the margin of the Bible. Manuscripts in the fridge in case of fire, Strunk's Elements in the bathroom, the Laramie City Directory explained away with "It might come in handy," all strike fear in the GS-7 heart. Nobody really wants to sleep with a writer, but Silly Service workers won't even talk to us. — Florence King

It is hard, said Mme Landau, when I told her about those railway lessons, in the end it is hard to know what it is that someone dies of. Yes, it is very hard, said Mme Landau, one really doesn't know. — W.G. Sebald

This is the most precious gift anyone has ever received. You gave me back a memory that I will cherish forever. You gave me something from my grandma I didn't know I had. And you kept it and it lef you back to mme. It gave me you'
I felt a wetness in my eyes and I blinked confused from the strange sensation. A small trickle of water rand down my cheek. I stared into the darkness as I held Pagan in my arms in amazement Death had just shed a tear. — Abbi Glines

So proper for a circus girl," Mme. Padva says with with a gleam in her eye. "We shall have to loosen those corset laces if we intend to keep you an intimate dinner company."
"I expected the corset unlacing would take place after dinner," Celia says mildly, earning a chorus of laughter.
"We shall keep Miss Bowen as intimate company regardless of the state of her corset," Chandresh says. "Make a note of that," he adds, waving a hand at Marco.
"Miss Bowen's corset is duly noted, sir," Marco replies, and the laghter bubbles over the table again. — Erin Morgenstern

Soon, what was tedious was everything. 'Beautiful things, they're so tedious! Paintings, they're enough to drive you mad ... How right you are, it's so tedious, writing letters!' In the end it was life itself that she declared to us was a bore, without one quite knowing from where she was taking her term of comparison. — Marcel Proust

Marie, now Mme. Driscoll, turned to Berthe and smiled, as she used to when they were children. Once again, the smile said, Have I done the right thing? Is this what you wanted? Yes, yes, said Berthe silently, but she went on crying. — Mavis Gallant

What, in fact, is a novel but a universe in which action is endowed with form, where final words are
pronounced, where people possess one another completely,
and where life assumes the aspect of destiny? 3 The world of the novel is only a rectification of the world
we live in, in pursuance of man's deepest wishes. For the world is undoubtedly the same one we know.
The suffering, the illusion, the love are the same. The heroes speak our language, have our weaknesses
and our strength. Their universe is neither more beautiful nor more enlightening than ours. But they, at
least, pursue their destinies to the bitter end and there are no more fascinating heroes than those who
indulge their passions to the fullest, Kirilov and Stavrogin, Mme Graslin, Julien Sorel, or the Prince de
Cleves. It is here that we can no longer keep pace with them, for they complete things that we can never
consummate — Albert Camus

And at once I fell in love with her, for if it is sometimes enough to make us love a woman that she should look on us with contempt, as I supposed Mlle Swann to have done, and that we should think that she can never be ours, sometimes, too, it is enough that she should look on us kindly, as Mme de Guermantes was doing, and that we should think of her as almost ours already. — Marcel Proust

It was clear that Mme Danglars was suffering from one of those nervous irritations which women are often unable to explain even to themselves. — Alexandre Dumas

The truth was that, with the Duchess de Luxembourg, with Mme de Morienval, Mme de Saint-Euverte and any number of others, the features that made their faces distinctive were a big red nose next to a hare-lip, or two wrinkled cheeks and a faint moustache. Such features cast their own spell well enough since, as a merely conventional form of handwriting, they enabled one to read a famous and impressive name; but ultimately they also gave rise to the notion that ugliness was somehow aristocratic, that it was a matter of indifference that the face of a grand lady should be beautiful, provided that it was distinguished. — Marcel Proust

Presently, some sort of fish was served to me on a plate with a small but noticeable trace of coagulated catsup along the border. Mme. Yoshoto asked me, in English
and her accent was unexpectedly charming
if I would prefer an egg, but I said, "Non, non, madame
merci!" I said I never ate eggs. M. Yoshoto leaned his newspaper against my water glass, and the three of us ate in silence; that is, they ate and I systematically swallowed in silence. — J.D. Salinger

There were some that were of so rare a beauty that my pleasure on catching sight of them was enhanced by surprise. By what privilege, on one morning rather than another, did the window on being uncurtained disclose to my wondering eyes the nymph Glauconome, whose lazy beauty, gently breathing, had the transparence of a vaporous emerald beneath whose surface I could see teeming the ponderable elements that coloured it? She made the sun join in her play, with a smile rendered languorous by an invisible haze which was nought but a space kept vacant about her translucent surface, which, thus curtailed, became more appealing, like those goddesses whom the sculptor carves in relief upon a block of marble, the rest of which he leaves unchiselled. So, in her matchless colour, she invited us out over those rough terrestrial roads, from which, seated beside Mme. de Villeparisis in her barouche, we should see, all day long and without ever reaching it, the coolness of her gentle palpitation. — Marcel Proust

Bouchalka was not a reflective person. He had his own idea of what a great prima donna should be like, and he took it for granted that Mme. Garnet corresponded to his conception. The curious thing was that he managed to impress his idea upon Cressida herself. She began to see herself as he saw her, to try to be like the notion of her that he carried everywhere in that pointed head of his. She was exalted quite beyond herself. Things that had been chilled under the grind came to life in her that winter, with the breath of Bouchalka's adoration. Then, if ever in her life, she heard the bird sing on the branch outside her window; and she wished she were younger, lovelier, freer. She wished there were no Poppas, no Horace, no Garnets. She longed to be only the bewitching creature Bouchalka imagined her. — Willa Cather

But he had expressed to Mme. du Chatelet the hope that a way out might lie in applying philosophy to history, and endeavoring to trace, beneath the flux of political events, the history of the human mind. 'Only philosophers should write history,' he said. 'In all nations, history is disfigured by fable, till at last philosophy comes to enlighten man; and when it does finally arrive in the midst of darkness, it finds the human mind so blinded centuries of error, that it can hardly undeceive it; it finds ceremonies, facts and monuments, heaped up to prove lies.' 'History,' he concludes, 'is after all nothing but a pack of tricks which we play upon the dead;' we transform the past to suit our wishes for the future, and in the upshot 'history proves that anything can be proved by history. — Will Durant

If young women were not deceived into a belief that affectation pleases, they would scarcely trouble themselves to practise it so much. — Maria Edgeworth

She [Mme des Laumes] belonged to that half of the human race in whom the curiosity the other half feels about the people it does not know is replaced by an interest in the people it does. — Marcel Proust

Mme Verdurin asked him: "Did you have some of my orangeade?" Whereupon M. de Charlus, with a gracious smile, in a crystalline tone which he rarely adopted, and with endless simperings and wrigglings of the hips, replied: "No, I preferred its neighbour, which is strawberry-juice, I think. It's delicious."[ ... ]But on hearing M. de Charlus say, in that shrill voice and with that smile and those gestures, "No, I preferred its neighbour, the strawberry-juice," one could say: "Ah, he likes the stronger sex,"[ ... ] — Marcel Proust

She felt that the diving image of Mme Stahl that she had carried in her soul for a whole month had vanished irretrievably ... And by no effort of imagination could she bring back the former Mme Stahl. — Leo Tolstoy

It was my good fortune to be linked with Mme. Curie through twenty years of sublime and unclouded friendship. I came to admire her human grandeur to an ever growing degree. Her strength, her purity of will, her austerity toward herself, her objectivity, her incorruptible judgement - all these were of a kind seldom found joined in a single individual ... The greatest scientific deed of her life - proving the existence of radioactive elements and isolating them - owes its accomplishment not merely to bold intuition but to a devotion and tenacity in execution under the most extreme hardships imaginable, such as the history of experimental science has not often witnessed. — Albert Einstein

On this evening, Mme. Padva wears a dress of black silk, hand embroidered with intricate patterns of cherry blossoms, something like a kimono reincarnated as a gown. Her silver hair is piled atop her head and held in place with a small jeweled black cage. A choker of perfectly cut scarlet rubies circles her neck, putting forth a vague impression of her throat having been slit. The overall effect is slightly morbid and incredibly elegant. — Erin Morgenstern

If you judge by appearances in this place,' said Mme de Chartres, 'you will often be deceived, because what appears to be the case hardly ever is. — Madame De La Fayette

Mme. de Gallardon, who could never stop herself from sacrificing her greatest social ambitions and highest hopes of someday dazzling the world to the immediate, obscure, and private pleasure of saying something disagreeable. — Marcel Proust

For example, when Seymour told one of the twins or Zooey or Franny or even Mme. Boo Boo (who was only two years younger than myself, and often entirely the Lady), to take off his or her galoshes on coming into the apartment, each and all of them knew he mostly meant that the floor would get tracked up if they didn't and that Bessie would have to get out the mop. When I told them to take off their galoshes, they knew I mostly meant that people who didn't were slobs. It was bound to make no small difference in the way they kidded or ragged us separately. — J.D. Salinger

Charlie?" he said, pulling mme back to face him. "I do love you." My breath caught on his words ... words I'd waited so long to hear. — Kimberly Derting

Mme. Bonacieux looked at the young man, restrained for a minute by a last hesitation; but there was so much ardor in his eyes, such persuasion in his voice, that she felt herself constrained to confide in him. Besides, she found herself in circumstances where everything must be risked for the sake of everything. — Alexandre Dumas