There is no man, however wise, who has not at some period of his youth said things, or lived in a way the consciousness of which is so unpleasant to him in later life that he would gladly, if he could, expunge it from his memory.
Interpretation
Everyone has made mistakes in their youth that they later regret, regardless of their wisdom.
This quote by Marcel Proust reflects on the universal experience of regret, emphasizing that even the wisest individuals have moments in their youth that they wish they could forget. It serves as a reminder that growth and learning often come from our past mistakes, and that it's natural to look back on previous choices with a sense of discomfort or embarrassment.
In practice
During a discussion about personal growth, one might say this quote to highlight the inevitability of regret.
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.
Raphael paints wisdom, Handel sings it, Phidias carves it, Shakespeare writes it, Wren builds it, Columbus sails it, Luther preaches it, Washington arms it, Watt mechanizes it.
If you abandon the present moment, you cannot live the moments of your daily life deeply.
If you can get really good at destroying your own wrong ideas, that is a great gift.
The power which makes a man able to entertain a good impulse is the same as that which enables him to make a good gun; it is imagination.
Force a hand, the voice warned, and it will fight you. But convince a mind to think as you want it to think, and you have an ally.
The youth do not see the old. They are not programmed to see the old, who are cancelled, negated, wiped out.
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