If a little dreaming is dangerous, the cure for it is not to dream less but to dream more, to dream all the time.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that instead of limiting our dreams due to fear, we should embrace and amplify our dreams.
Marcel Proust emphasizes the importance of dreaming and imagination as vital components of a fulfilling life. He argues that the dangers associated with dreaming should not lead us to suppress our aspirations; rather, we should engage with our dreams fully and continually. By dreaming more, we can explore the depths of our creativity and desires, ultimately enriching our lives rather than shrinking away from potential disappointments.
In practice
This quote could be used in a motivational speech to inspire creativity among students.
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.
Authentic empowerment is the knowing that you are on purpose, doing God's work, peacefully and harmoniously.
Many of us would probably be better fishermen if we did not spend so much time watching and waiting for the world to become perfect
The rich can buy everything but health, virtue, friendship, wit, good looks, love, pride, intelligence, grace, and, if you need it, happiness.
Discipline, it has been suggested, is the means of human spiritual evolution. What provides the motive, the energy for discipline? This force I believe to be love. I define love thus: The will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth.
In old age, you realise that while you're divided from your youth by decades, you can close your eyes and summon it at will. As a writer it puts one at a distinct advantage.
Charity is like warmth in springtime or summer that causes grass, plants, and trees to grow. Without charity, or spiritual warmth, nothing grows.
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