These dreams reminded me that, since I wished some day to become a writer, it was high time to decide what sort of books I was going to write. But as soon as I asked myself the question, and tried to discover some subject to which I could impart a philosophical significance of infinite value, my mind would stop like a clock, my consciousness would be faced with a blank, I would feel either that I was wholly devoid of talent or perhaps that some malady of the brain was hindering its development.
Interpretation
The quote reflects the struggle of a writer to find their voice and purpose in literature.
Marcel Proust expresses the internal conflict that arises when aspiring to become a writer. He highlights the pressure to create meaningful work and the fear of inadequacy that can come when one attempts to define their intellectual and artistic path. Proust illustrates that the journey to uncover one's unique narrative voice can be fraught with self-doubt and creative paralysis, particularly when seeking a profound philosophical significance in one's writing.
In practice
This quote can inspire writers during a workshop on overcoming creative blocks.
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!
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.
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.
Greater in battle_x000D_ than the man who would conquer_x000D_ a thousand-thousand men,_x000D_ is he who would conquer_x000D_ just one —_x000D_ himself._x000D_ Better to conquer yourself_x000D_ than others._x000D_ When you've trained yourself,_x000D_ living in constant self-control,_x000D_ neither a deva nor gandhabba,_x000D_ nor a Mara banded with Brahmas,_x000D_ could turn that triumph_x000D_ back into defeat.
Wit lies in recognizing the resemblance among things which differ and the difference between things which are alike.
I simply taught, preached, wrote God's Word: otherwise I did nothing. The Word of God did it all.
The world is ready to give up its secrets if we only know how to knock, how to give it the necessary blow. The strength and force of the blow come through concentration.
When you don't have any money, any things, any house - if you are unattached, what is the difficulty in it? But when you have everything and you remain unattached - a beggar in the palace - then something very deep has been attained.
A state of expectancy is a great assetl; a state of uncertainty-one moment thinking "perhaps" and the next moment thinking "I don't know"-will never get desired results.
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