We do not succeed in changing things according to our desire, but gradually our desire changes. The situation that we hoped to change because it was intolerable becomes unimportant. We have not managed to surmount the obstacle, as we were absolutely determined to do, but life has taken us round it, led us past it, and then if we turn round to gaze at the remote past, we can barely catch sight of it, so imperceptible has it become.
Interpretation
We often cannot change our circumstances, but our perspectives and desires can shift over time.
In this quote, Marcel Proust reflects on the human experience of dealing with challenges and obstacles. He suggests that while we may feel a strong desire to change our situations, instead of overcoming these barriers directly, our focus and desires evolve over time. As we move forward in life, the things we once found intolerable may eventually become insignificant, illustrating the transformative nature of time and perspective.
In practice
In a motivational speech about resilience in the face of challenges.
But when from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, taste and smell alone, more fragile but more enduring, more unsubstantial, more persistent, more faithful, remain poised a long time, like souls, remembering, waiting, hoping, amid the ruins of all the rest; and bear unflinchingly, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection.
At that time, he was satisfying a sensual curiosity by experiencing the pleasures of people who live for love. He had believed he could stop there, that he would not be obliged to learn their sorrows; how small a thing her charm was for him now compared with the astounding terror that extended out from it like a murky halo, the immense anguish of not knowing at every moment what she had been doing, of not possessing her everywhere and always!
A person does not...stand motionless and clear before our eyes with his merits, his defects, his plans, his intentions with regard to ourself exposed on his surface...but is a shadow which we can never succeed in penetrating...a shadow behind which we can alternately imagine, with equal justification, that there burns the flame of hatred and of love.
We are all of us obliged, if we are to make reality endurable, to nurse a few little follies in ourselves.
There are perhaps no days of our childhood we lived so fully as those we spent with a favorite book.
Every kiss provokes another. Oh, in those earliest days of love how naturally the kisses spring to life! So closely, in their profusion, do they crowd together that lovers would find it as hard to count the kisses exchanged in an hour as to count the flowers in a meadow in May.
I'm just one generation between someone who cheered when Germans were burning and someone who doesn't even know that there is a border. That's a miracle - really is a miracle - and it gets me really emotional.
Of all sound of all bells... most solemn and touching is the peal which rings out the Old Year.
Don't think about making women fit the world -- think about making the world fit women."
My own life in India, since I came to it in 1893 to make it my home, has been devoted to one purpose, to give back to India her ancient freedom.
You cannot change your destination overnight, but you can change your direction overnight.
By surrendering my life to the revolution, I found eternal life
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