Quotes About Memory

When I came to you out of all that dust and heat and toil, I positively smelt violets at once. But not the sweet violet - you know, that early dark violet that smells of melting snow and spring grass.

The terrible thing is that it's impossible to tear the past out by the roots.

He was much changed and grown even thinner since Pyotr Ivanovich had last seen him, but, as is always the case with the dead, his face was handsomer and above all more dignified than than when he was alive.

And yet, now that years have passed, I recall it and wonder that it could distress me so much. It will be the same thing, too, with this trouble. Time will go by and I shall not mind about this either.

It was better not to remember such terrible details.

It is dreadful that one cannot tear our the past by the roots. We cannot tear it out but we can hide the memory of it.

Yes, yes, how was it now?" he thought, going over his dream. "Now, how was it? To be sure! Alabin was giving a dinner at Darmstadt; no, not Darmstadt, but something American. Yes, but then, Darmstadt was in America. Yes, Alabin was giving a dinner on glass tables, and the tables sang, Il mio tesoro—not Il mio tesoro though, but something better, and there were some sort of little decanters on the table, and they were women, too," he remembered.

It is dreadful that one cannot tear the past out by the roots.

Pero ¿qué había sido de aquella llama que en Moscú animaba su rostro haciendo brillar sus ojos y prestando luminosidad a su sonrisa?

And in imagination he began to recall the best moments of his pleasant life. But strange to say none of those best moments of his pleasant life now seemed at all what they had then seemed – none of them except the first recollections of childhood. There, in childhood, there had been something really pleasant with which it would be possible to live if it could return. But the child who had experienced that happiness existed no longer, it was like a reminiscence of somebody else.

Ah, how good! How nice!" he said to himself, when he remembered that his wife and the French were no more.

Much sand has run out since then, many recollections of the past have faded from my memory or become blurred in indistinct visions, and poor Grisha himself has long since reached the end of his pilgrimage; but the impression which he produced upon me, and the feelings which he aroused in my breast, will never leave my mind. O truly Christian Grisha, your faith was so strong that you could feel the actual presence of God; your love so great that the words fell of themselves from your lips.

He remembered about [name], about his death, and involuntarily started comparing these two men, so different and at the same time so similar, because of the love he had for both of them, and because both had lived and both had died.

Painting contains a divine force which not only makes absent men present, as friendship is said to do, but moreover makes the dead seem almost alive.

I prefer to rely on my memory. I have lived with that memory a long time, I am used to it, and if I have rearranged or distorted anything, surely that was done for my own benefit.

Though murdered kings, like all dead men, lie quiet and unoffending in the ground, they rot and spread contagion in men's minds.

Those who lose by a revolution are rarely inclined to call it by its real name. For that name, in spite of the efforts of spiteful reactionaries, is surrounded by the historic memory of mankind with a halo of liberation from all shackles and all prejudices.

Usually when I see someone famous, for some reason, I think I know them.

I've forgotten most of what I've read and, frankly, it never seemed very important to me or to the world.

Garages, barns and attics are always older than the buildings to which they are attached.

Fare thee well my nightingale I lived but to be near you Though you are singing somewhere still I can no longer hear you

I never think about The Past but sometimes The Past thinks about me and sits down ever so lightly on my face—

When I am alone You'll come back to me It's happened before It's called memory I'm not even sure If I know where to start But starting is second First we must part I'm too tired now To fight anymore We're saying goodbye At the innermost door

What I loved in my old life--I haven't forgotten--it lives in my spine.