Time, which changes people, does not alter the image we have retained of them.

The line contrasts two kinds of change: the objective changes time works on people, and the subjective persistence of memory. Proust suggests that our inner “image” of someone can become fixed—an emotional and imaginative construct that resists later evidence. This helps explain why reunions can feel disorienting: we meet a person altered by years, yet we approach them through an old mental portrait. The remark also points to a broader Proustian theme: memory is not a neutral record but a creative force, preserving, simplifying, and sometimes distorting the past in ways that shape love, grief, jealousy, and identity.