Quotes About Memory

If I make a film about now, the minute it was done, it wouldn't be about now; it'd be about then.

The past is just a ghost.

In the end we remember all the students we've gone to school with and invite them to our homes only to find out that we no longer have the least thing in common with them, I thought.

I had to spend my entire childhood in the Altensam dungeon like an inmate doing time for no comprehensible reason, for a crime he can't remember committing, a judicial error probably.

I want to see him clearly again with the help of these notes, these scraps of memory, which are meant to clarify and recall to mind not only the hopeless situation of my friend but also my own hopelessness at the time, for just as Paul's life had once again run into an impasse, so mine too had run into an impasse, or rather been driven into one. I am bound to say that, like Paul, I had once more overstated and overrated my existence, that I had exploited it to excess.

Wenn wir einen geliebten Menschen verlieren, behalten wir doch immer ein Kleidungsstück von ihm wenigstens solange wir den Geruch des Verlorenen noch an ihm wahrnehmen können und tatsächlich bis in unserem Tod hinein, weil wir auch dann noch glauben, sein Geruch machte uns dieses Kleidungsstück gegenwärtig, wenn das auch längst nur mehr noch nichts ist als Einbildung.

Die einzigen Freunde, die ich habe, sind die Toten, die mir ihre Literatur hinterlassen haben, ich habe keine anderen.

Memory. Symbol. Pattern. These are the three items that, more than any other, separate the professorial reader from the rest of the crowd.

corollaries—where have I seen his face, don't I know that

Sins that have been completely absolved on one occasion sometimes on other occasions cannot be completely forgotten or set aside. They may continue to have a ripple effect. But it is comforting to realize that they are no longer remembered by God, even if traces remain in human memory.

The early Christian historical memory was formed on three land masses -Asia, Africa and Europe. In this respect it does not differ from textually recorded human history, which formed in the conjunction between these three great spaces. Only three, not seven.

She considers the past. She measures it and weighs it and holds it in her hand like a plum. The past is everything now, and she understands that this is what it means to be dying: You stop looking forward, instead living for moments that happened years before.

She philosophically noted dates as they came past in the revolution of the year. Her own birthday, and every other day individualized by incidents in which she had taken some share. She suddenly thought, one afternoon, that there was another date, of greater importance than all those; that of her own death; a day which lay sly and unseen among all the other days of the year, giving no sign or sound when she annually passed over it; but not the less surely there. When was it?

She was but a transient impression, half forgotten.

Every woman who makes a permanent impression on a man is afterwards recalled to his mind's eye as she appeared in one particular scene, which seems ordained to be her special medium of manifestation throughout all the pages of his memory.

Bygones would never be complete bygones till she was a bygone herself.

To find themselves utterly alone at night where company is desirable and expected makes some people fearful; but a case more trying by far to the nerves is to discover some mysterious companionship when intuition, sensation, memory, analogy, testimony, probability, induction--every kind of evidence in the logician's list--have united to persuade consciousness that it is quite alone.

Nameless, unknown to me as you were, I couldn't forget your voice!' 'For how long?' 'O - ever so long. Days and days.' 'Days and days! Only days and days? O, the heart of a man! Days and days!' 'But, my dear madam, I had not known you more than a day or two. It was not a full-blown love - it was the merest bud - red, fresh, vivid, but small. It was a colossal passion in embryo. It never returned.

I shan't forget you, Jude,' he said, smiling, as the cart moved off. 'Be a good boy, remember; and be kind to animals and birds, and read all you can.

I went, and knelt, and scooped my hand As if to drink, into the brook, And a faint figure seemed to stand Above me, with the bygone look.

I am now about to enter on my normal condition. For people are almost always in their graves. When we survey the long race of men, it is strange and still more strange to find that they are mainly dead men, who have scarcely ever been otherwise.

The best is not to remember that your nature and your past doings have been just like thousands' and thousands', and that your coming life and doings 'll be like thousands's and thousands'.

I have seen your mother; and I will never see her again!

Reminiscence is less an endowment than a disease, and expectation in its only comfortable form--that of absolute faith--is practically an impossibility; whilst in the form of hope and the secondary compounds, patience, impatience, resolve, curiosity, it is a constant fluctuation between pleasure and pain.