Quotes About Memory

recalling our life in the old days at Combray with my great-aunt, at Balbec, Paris, Doncières, Venice, and the rest;

Possibly they knew better than I did that the Duchesse de Guise was Princess of Cleves, of Orléans, of Porcien, and so forth, but long before they knew all these names, they had known the Duchesse de Guise's face, which was subsequently what this name reflected back to them. I had begun with the fairy, even if she was soon fated to perish; they had begun with the woman herself.

cannot say, now that I come to think about it, how many times I heard the word "cousin

When I raised a corner of the heavy curtain of habit (the stupefying habit which during the whole course of our life conceals from us almost the whole universe, and in the dead of night, without changing the label, substitutes for the most dangerous or intoxicating poisons of life some kind of anodyne which does not procure any delight), such a memory would come back to me

Marcel Proust

It is true that these changes have occurred to us without our being aware of them; but the distance between the memory which suddenly returns and our present personality as similarly between two memories of different years and places, is so great that it would suffice, apart from their specific uniqueness, to make comparison between them impossible.

it was only at that moment—more than a year after her burial, because of the anachronism which so often prevents the calendar of facts from corresponding to the calendar of feelings—that I became conscious that she was dead.

Reality is formed only by memory.

And nothing reminds me so much of the monthly parts of Notre-Dame de Paris, and of various books by Gérard de Nerval, that used to hang outside the grocer's door at Combray,

Suddenly there came a memory which I had not seen for a long time, for it had remained dissolved in the transparent, fluid expanses of my memory, until it formed into crystals.

Hâlâ mümkün olan bir ?eyden dakika dakika art?k mümkün olmayan bir ?eye geçi?te, insan?n göz yumup kendi eliyle derinle?tirdi?i bir ac? var.

Se o rosto de uma mulher é dificilmente interpretado pelos nossos olhos, que não podem aplicar-se a toda essa superfície movediça, aos lábios, mais ainda, à memória; se nuvens o alteram conforme sua posição social e conforme a altura em que estamos situados, que cortina mais espessa ainda está corrida entre os atos daquela a quem vemos, e suas razões!

Jean would be conscious of a curious feeling that he was living simultaneously in the immediate presence of a particular day and in other similar days of long ago.

Memory, instead of being a duplicate always present before our eyes of the various events of our life, is rather an abyss from which at odd moments a chance resemblance enables us to draw up, restored to life, dead impressions; but even then there are innumerable little details which have not fallen into that potential reservoir of memory, and which will remain for ever beyond our control.

there is always less egoism in pure imagination than in recollection;

A ressurreição ao despertar — após esse benéfico aspecto de alienação mental que é o sono — deve assemelhar-se no fundo ao que se passa quando encontramos um nome, um verso, um estribilho esquecido. E a ressurreição da alma após a morte talvez seja concebível como um fenômeno de memória.

But we have looked too far ahead, for all this did not happen until after the Verdurins' party which we have interrupted, and we must go back to the point at which we left off.

For me, of course, these faces were not what they must have been for Saint-Loup: in his memory, through the transparent indifference of impassive features that feigned not to know him, under the ordinariness of a greeting that could have been exchanged with anyone else, he could see the tumbled hair, the gasping mouth, the half-closed eyes, all the detail of a silent scene which a painter, wishing not to offend visitors to his studio, conceals behind a more seemly canvas.

for as the dead exist only in us, it is ourselves that we strike without ceasing when we persist in recalling the blows that we have dealt them.

Mas uma lembrança, um pesar são coisas móveis. Dias há em que se vão para tão longe que mal os distinguimos e os julgamos desaparecidos. Começamos então a atentar noutras coisas.

Swann made a hobby of collecting scraps of 'real life')

Our memory and our heart are not large enough to be able to remain faithful. We have not room enough, in our mental field, to keep the dead there as well as the living. We are obliged to build over what has gone before and is brought to light only by a chance excavation

La filosofia parla spesso di atti liberi e di atti necessari. Forse non ve n'è nessuno più completamente subìto da noi di quello che, in virtù di una forza ascensionale compressa durante l'azione, fa, quando il nostro pensiero è in riposo, risalire così un ricordo livellato agli altri dalla forza oppressiva della distrazione, e slanciarsi, perché a nostra insaputa esso conteneva più degli altri un fascino di cui ci accorgiamo soltanto ventiquattro ore dopo.

By the time one wants to remember how one began to love a woman, one is already in love; during earlier reveries, one did not say to oneself, "this is the beginning of love, I must pay attention," and the feelings crept up on us almost unnoticed.