There are mountainous, arduous days, up which one takes an infinite time to climb, and downward-sloping days which one can descend at full tilt, singing as one goes.
Interpretation
Life is a mix of tough and easy days, each requiring a different approach.
In this quote, Marcel Proust reflects on the nature of life through the metaphor of mountains and slopes. He illustrates how life has its difficult 'mountainous' days that demand effort and endurance, contrasted with the easier 'downward-sloping' days that allow for joy and a lighter spirit. This duality highlights the importance of resilience in times of struggle and the ability to celebrate when things flow more easily.
In practice
This quote is perfect for a motivational talk about overcoming 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!
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.
Life's enchanted cup sparkles near the brim.
No woman can call herself free who does not own and control her body. No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother.
No, it's not fair, but what makes Earth feel like Hell is our expectation that it should feel like Heaven. Earth is earth. Dead is dead. You'll find out for yourself soon enough. It won't help the situation for you to get all upset.
That familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.
Let every dawn of morning be to you as the beginning of life, and every setting sun be to you as its close: β then let every one of these short lives leave its sure record of some kindly thing done for others β some goodly strength or knowledge gained for yourselves.
As an improviser, I always find it jarring when I meet someone in real life whose first answer is no. βNo, we canβt do that.β βNo, thatβs not in the budget.β βNo, I will not hold your hand for a dollar.β What kind of way is that to live?
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