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Memory Quotes

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Memory Quotes

““Noah?” I gasped, trying to understand through the screams in my head. “I’ve got you. I swear to God, I’ve got you,” said Noah. “Stay with me, Echo.” I wanted to. I wanted to stay with him, but the shouting and screams and glass breaking in my mind grew louder. “Make it stop.” He tightened his grip on my arms. “Fight, Echo! You’ve got to f*cking fight. Come on, baby. You’re safe.””

SafeMemoryFightRememberingStayNoah HutchinsEcho EmersonGot YouThere For
Book:Pushing the Limits
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“Of course he wasn't dead. He could never be dead until she herself had finished feeling and thinking. The kiss of his memory made pictures of love and light against the wall. Here was peace. She pulled in her horizon like a great fish-net. Pulled it from around the waist of the world and draped it over her shoulder. So much of life in its meshes! She called in her soul to come and see.”

DeathPeaceLossGriefMemoryGrievingMourningRemembrance
Book:Their Eyes Were Watching God
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“Then one morning she’d begun to feel her sorrow easing, like something jagged that had cut into her so long it had finally dulled its edges, worn itself down. That same day Rachel couldn’t remember which side her father had parted his hair on, and she’d realized again what she’d learned at five when her mother left – that what made losing someone you loved bearable was not remembering but forgetting. Forgetting the small things first, the smell of the soap her mother had bathed with, the color of the dress she’d worn to church, then after a while the sound of her mother’s voice, the color of her hair. It amazed Rachel how much you could forget, and everything you forgot made that person less alive inside you until you could finally endure it. After more time passed you could let yourself remember, even want to remember. But even then what you felt those first days could return and remind you the grief that was still there, like old barbed wire embedded in a tree’s heartwood.”

DeathGriefSorrowEndureMemoryForgettingRemembering
Book:Serena
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“I am constantly mystified by what John ends up remembering… I just don’t understand why he’s able to hang on to information like that, while so many other more important memories evaporate. Then again, I suppose so much of what stays with us is often insignificant. The memories we take to the ends of our lives have no real rhyme or reason, especially when you think of the endless things that you do over the course of a day, a week, a month, a year, a lifetime. All the cups of coffee, hand-washings, changes of clothes, lunches, goings to the bathroom, headaches, naps, walks to school, trips to the grocery store, conversations about the weather—all the things so unimportant they should be immediately forgotten. Yet they aren’t. I often think of the Chinese red bathrobe I had when I was twenty-seven years old; the sound of our first cat Charlie’s feet on the linoleum of our old house; the hot rarefied air around aluminum pot the moment before the kernels of popcorn burst open. I think of these things as often as I think about getting married or giving birth or the end of the Second World War. What is truly amazing is that before you know it, sixty years go by and you can remember maybe eight or nine important events, along with a thousand meaningless ones. How can that be? You want to think there’s a pattern to it all because it makes you feel better, gives you some sense of a reason why we’re here, but there really isn’t any. People look for God in these patterns, these reasons, but only because they don’t know where else to look. Things happen to us: some of it important, most of it not, and a little of it stays with us till the end. What stays after that? I’ll be damned if I know. (pp.174-175)”

ReasonMomentsTimeMemoriesAgingLifetimeMemoryPatternsAfter DeathMeaningful LifeTime PassingOrdinary LifeEnd Of LifeMemory LossEnd Of Life Musings
Book:The Leisure Seeker
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“Hold childhood in reverence, and do not be in any hurry to judge it for good or ill. Leave exceptional cases to show themselves, let their qualities be tested and confirmed, before special methods are adopted. Give nature time to work before you take over her business, lest you interfere with her dealings. You assert that you know the value of time and are afraid to waste it. You fail to perceive that it is a greater waste of time to use it ill than to do nothing, and that a child ill taught is further from virtue than a child who has learnt nothing at all. You are afraid to see him spending his early years doing nothing. What! is it nothing to be happy, nothing to run and jump all day? He will never be so busy again all his life long. Plato, in his Republic, which is considered so stern, teaches the children only through festivals, games, songs, and amusements. It seems as if he had accomplished his purpose when he had taught them to be happy; and Seneca, speaking of the Roman lads in olden days, says, "They were always on their feet, they were never taught anything which kept them sitting." Were they any the worse for it in manhood? Do not be afraid, therefore, of this so-called idleness. What would you think of a man who refused to sleep lest he should waste part of his life? You would say, "He is mad; he is not enjoying his life, he is robbing himself of part of it; to avoid sleep he is hastening his death." Remember that these two cases are alike, and that childhood is the sleep of reason. The apparent ease with which children learn is their ruin. You fail to see that this very facility proves that they are not learning. Their shining, polished brain reflects, as in a mirror, the things you show them, but nothing sinks in. The child remembers the words and the ideas are reflected back; his hearers understand them, but to him they are meaningless. Although memory and reason are wholly different faculties, the one does not really develop apart from the other. Before the age of reason the child receives images, not ideas; and there is this difference between them: images are merely the pictures of external objects, while ideas are notions about those objects determined by their relations.”

ReasonChildhoodMemory
Book:Emile, or On Education
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“Put out my eyes: and I shall see you, too, seal up my ears: and I shall hear you still, and without feet I yet can go to you, and with no mouth, adjure you and I will. Break off my arms, and I shall hold you fast even with my heart, as though it were a hand; arrest my heart, my brain to throb is sworn, and if into my brain you fling a brand, yet on my very blood you will be borne.”

LovePoetryPoemMemorySenses
Book:Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God
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“Our evolution depends on our memory. If we keep forgetting the mistakes of the past, only to keep repeating them, then we will never change. Humanity will never move forward, spiritually or morally, to become superior beings.”

PeopleHumansPhilosophyWisdomTruthPastRememberLife LessonsHumanityLife QuotesChangeLeadershipConsciousnessHistorySocietyMankindLessonsMemorySociologyConsequencesSocial ChangeUglinessHumanity QuotesExperiencesSuzy KassemRegressionMankind QuotesUgly TruthsEvolution QuotesBad LeadershipRegressChanhing
Book:Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
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“Of all the baseball stadiums in the world, I like being in Jingu Stadium the best of all. In an infield seat behind first base, or in the right-field bleachers. I love all the sounds, the smells, the way I can sit there, just gazing up at the sky. I love the breeze caressing my skin, I love sipping an ice-cold beer, observing the people around me. Whether the team wins or loses, I love the time spent there most of all. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ Of course, winning is much better than losing. No argument there. But winning or losing doesn’t affect the weight and value of the time. It’s the same time, either way. A minute is a minute, an hour is an hour. We need to cherish it. We need to deftly reconcile ourselves with time, and leave behind as many precious memories as we can— that’s what’s the most valuable." ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀”

LifeWinningLosingMemory
Book:First Person Singular: Stories
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“She could sense it very clearly: for me, no less than for her, the past counted far more than the present, remembering something far more than possessing it. Compared to memory, every possession can only ever seem disappointing, banal, inadequate ... She understood me so well! My anxiety that the present 'immediately' turned into the past so that I could love it and dream about it at leisure was just like hers, was identical. It was 'our' vice, this: to go forwards with our heads forever turned back.”

MemoryNostalgia
Author:Giorgio Bassani
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“याद आता है बेमकसद नहर की पुलिया पर बैठना, खेतों में घूमना। मई-जून की गर्मी में गांव का जीवन और दिसंबर-जनवरी की रातों में खेतों की रखवाली करते किसान। वो गिलास भरकर छाछ पीना, थाली में रात की ठंडी रोटी के साथ पानी वाली हरी मिर्च और ताजा मक्खन, बाजरे की खिचड़ी में ढ़ेर सारा अलूणा घी... जिस तरह बचपन नहीं रहा, अब वे दिन भी नहीं रहे।”

MemoriesChildhoodMemoryNostalgiaIndian CultureRural LifeVillage Life
Book:आई डोन्ट लाइक यू
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“When our thoughts turn towards the past, we are often mired in the seductive trap of regret or bathed in the illusory glow of nostalgia. We wallow in the murky waters of what once was, reaching out to the shadows of deeds done and words uttered. Yet, the past is but a deserted stage, the actors long departed, the play concluded. No amount of wandering in its hallowed halls can change the script that was once performed.”

ThinkingPastHistoryRegretMemoryNostalgiaThoughtStoicRumination
Book:The Power of the Present: A Stoic's Guide to Unyielding Focus
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“She loved the smell of old truck; thick cotton and vinyl seat covers, old gasoline and oil, the smell of country, decades of farmers, workers and families taking trips back and forth to town, up backroads to swimming holes, over fields, through all the weather. She imagined what this truck would have seen if it had eyes and a memory. She was about to become one more episode in its existence.”

MemoryNostalgiaTruckFarmingFarmAmericanaAntiqueFarm TruckOld Truck
Author:Glenda Love
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“Life isn’t in our brain // It flows through our veins. Just a little cut to drain out the galaxies that keep me up tonight. Just a little cut and all this goes away. Just a little cut and no more thoughts. No memories. No pain. I mean screw nostalgia. I don’t want it. Take it back!”

PastMemoryNostalgiaAvoidanceSleeplessnessLetting Go Of The PastBad MemoriesSuicide ThoughtsLetting Go Of Negative PeopleLetting Go Of Your Grudges
Book:Red Sugar, No More
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