Swann's Way

hearing of my grandmother's illness were genuine enough; but they
knew, either instinctively or from their own experience, that our early
impulsive emotions have but little influence over our later actions and
the conduct of our lives; and that regard for moral obligations, loyalty
to our friends, patience in finishing our work, obedience to a rule
of life, have a surer foundation in habits solidly formed and blindly
followed than in these momentary transports, ardent but sterile. They
would have preferred to Bloch, as companions for myself, boys who would
have given me no more than it is proper, by all the laws of middle-class
morality, for boys to give one another, who would not unexpectedly
send me a basket of fruit because they happened, that morning, to have
thought of me with affection, but who, since they were incapable of
inclining in my favour, by any single impulse of their imagination and
emotions, the exact balance of the duties and claims of friendship, were
as incapable of loading the scales to my prejudice. Even the injuries
we do them will not easily divert from the path of their duty towards us
those conventional natures of which my great-aunt furnished a type: who,