It is often hard to bear the tears that we ourselves have caused.

The line distills a recurring Proustian insight: remorse is not only moral but psychological, because the suffering we inflict returns to us as an image we cannot easily escape. Another person’s tears become a mirror in which we see our own capacity for cruelty, carelessness, or self-deception, and that recognition can be more unbearable than being the one wronged. The quote also hints at the paradox of intimacy—those closest to us are the ones we can hurt most, and their visible grief binds us to the consequences of our actions. In Proust’s world, memory and perception intensify this burden, making guilt a persistent, revisited experience.