Quotes About Forgetting

There is something stupid about raw events of which Destiny, if it exists, cannot be insensible. There is something stupid about self-evidence and truth from which a superior irony cannot but spare us. Thus everything is expiated one way or another. Forgetting or mourning are no more then the period of time required by reversibility.

There is something occulted inside us: our death. But something else is hidden there, lying in wait for us within each of our cells: the forgetting of death. In our cells our immortality lies in wait for us. It's common to speak of the struggle of life against death, but there is an inverse peril. And we must struggle against the possibility that we will not die. (p. 5)

Well, there you are. It's not that these things happen or even that one survives them, but what makes life strange is that they are forgotten. Even the one moment that you thought was your eternity fades out and is forgotten and dies. This is what makes life so droll - the way you forget and every day is a new day, and there's hope for everybody, hooray...

The physical memory blunders through the doors the mind has tried to seal. ... Wisdom says forget, the body howls.

All time is eternally present and so all time is ours, There is no sense in forgetting and every sense in dreaming.

I took them into the garden and burned them one by one and I thought how easy it is to destroy the past and how difficult to forget it.

They say every snowflake is different. If that were true, how could the world go on? How could we ever get up off our knees? How could we ever recover from the wonder of it? By forgetting. We cannot keep in mind too many things. There is only the present and nothing to remember.

They say that every snowflake is different. If that were true, how could the world go on? How could we ever get up off our knees? How could we ever recover from the wonder of it? By forgetting. We cannot keep in mind too many things. There is only the present and nothing to remember

Amuse yourself, torment your desires. Drink when you're thirsty -- that would be very much too simple! If you didn't harbour a temptation eternally in your soul, you'd run the risk of forgetting yourself.

To my mind, forgetting is a risky strategy for living. Memory is essential to us. It is DNA. We need to remember, and we need to imagine. That's why we have books, writing, fiction.

Americans like to get rich fast. That this means we go broke fast, too, is something that we have become very good at forgetting. Our ignorance of history is matched only by our unfailing optimism; it's actually part of our optimism.

Beneath history, memory and forgetting Beneath memory and forgetting, life.

How can one set these opposite states in harmony? There is only one way: through giving oneself completely. How does one give oneself? By forgetting the traumas of the past, and by not forming expectations about the future - in other words, the orgasm. How can one do this? Very simply: by not being afraid to err.

but I feel as if I have said everything of importance that I need to say, I feel as if I'm losing my memory and forgetting who I am.

if pain must come, may it come quickly. because i have a life to live, and i need to live it in the best possible. if he has to make a choice, may he make it now. then i will either wait for him or forget him. waiting is painful. forgetting is painful. but not knowing which to do is the worst kind of suffering.

The prerequisite of originality is the art of forgetting, at the proper moment, what we know.

Sometimes, I think one should only live in the present. The past is only a heavy burden to carry with you. And yet… it's so hard to let them go… to forget… to move ahead…

Always we learn things and then we forget them.

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star, Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar: Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come

You must not face it. Because it is a – certainty it has to be forgotten. One cannot – must not – fear a certainty. All we know is this moment, and this moment, Ross, we are alive! We are. We are. The past is over, gone. What is to come doesn't exist yet. That's tomorrow! It's only now that can ever be, at any one moment. And at this moment, now, we are alive – and together. We can't ask more. There isn't any more to ask.

We've inherited hope— the gift of forgetting.

It's so hard to forget pain, but it's even harder to remember sweetness. We have no scar to show for happiness. We learn so little from peace.

The brightest memory fades faster than the dullest ink.

In a sense our brains are like an archive, where material is well-preserved and properly catalogued, but also dissolves, or becomes re-shelved or misplaced, or in some cases never makes it there to begin with.