For one cannot change, that is to say become another person, while continuing to acquiesce to the feelings of the person one no longer is.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes that personal transformation requires letting go of past feelings and identities.
Marcel Proust's quote reflects the notion that genuine change in one's identity and character cannot occur while still holding onto the emotional ties and perspectives of a previous self. To truly evolve into a new person, it is essential to confront and release the feelings associated with who you used to be, allowing for a complete transformation and rebirth of self.
In practice
During a personal development workshop, you might use this quote to encourage participants to let go of old identities.
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.
We're going to have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this, regardless of the politics.
Men do change, and change comes like a little wind that ruffles the curtains at dawn, and it comes like the stealthy perfume of wildflowers hidden in the grass.
βA change of work is the best rest.
The danger is that people may mistake what is basically a change in vocabulary for a change in behavior, practices, and attitudes. While practically all Americans have learned to talk inoffensively, not enough have learned to think differently, nor act positively.
Women may be the one group that grows more radical with age.
The seasons alter: hoary-headed frosts _x000D_ _x000D_ Fall in the fresh lap of the crimson rose,_x000D_ _x000D_ And on old Hiems' thin and icy crown _x000D_ _x000D_ An odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds_x000D_ _x000D_ Is, as in mockery, set. The spring, the summer,_x000D_ _x000D_ The childing autumn, angry winter, change_x000D_ _x000D_ Their wonted liveries, and the mazed world,_x000D_ _x000D_ By their increase, now knows not which is which.
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