Quotes about memories

page 8

“Maybe it’s sad that these are now memories. And maybe it’s not sad.”

“Funny how the nature of a normal day is the first memory to fade.”

“Love is not simply the sum of sweet greetings and wrenching partings and kisses and embraces, but is made up more of the memory of what has happened and the imagining of what is to come.”

“I think what you notice most when you haven’t been home in a while is how much the trees have grown around your memories.”

“As long as we remember a person, they're not really gone. Their thoughts, their feelings, their memories, they become a part of us.”

“A person could leave you so quickly. So much history and time and memories, but they snuck away from you, and other things took their place. How could you hold on? Wait. A bigger question. The biggest. How could you hold on and
let go?”

“Memory warps time, as it does the sights and sounds and smells of reality; for what shapes it is emotion, which can twist what seems clear, just as the surface of a pond seems to bend the stick thrust into the water.”

“All memories fade away in the end. Then, only dreams are left. And because they are all we have, we confide our life’s worries to them.”

“After departure, only invisible things are left, perhaps the life of the world is held together by invisible chains of memory and loss and love. So many things, so many people, depart! And we can only repossess them in our minds.”

“Your memory is your first and best weapon, ladies. Learn to use it.”

“Memory is a snare, pure and simple; it alters, it subtly rearranges the past to fit the present.”

“For better or for worse, music is the language of memory. It is also the language of love.”

“I've learned that memories can have a physical, almost living presence.”

“Sweet is the memory of distant friends! Like the mellow rays of the departing sun, it falls tenderly, yet sadly, on the heart.”

“April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.”

“Whether we and our politicians know it or not, Nature is party to all our deals and decisions, and she has more votes, a longer memory, and a sterner sense of justice than we do.”

“Our hearts grow tender with childhood memories and love of kindred, and we are better throughout the year for having, in spirit, become a child again at Christmastime.”

“Nostalgia is also a dangerous form of comparison. Think about how often we compare our lives to a memory that nostalgia has so completely edited that it never really existed.”

“At some point, your memories, your stories, your adventures, will be the only things you'll have left.”

“An education isn't how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know. It's being able to differentiate between what you do know and what you don't. It's knowing where to go to find out what you need to know, and it's knowing how to use the information once you get it.”

“Memory is the sense of loss, and loss pulls us after it.”

“I want to believe that memories, even sad and painful ones, should not be forgotten forever.”

“And that was it; it was so easy for her. My own memories did not even belong to me. But I knew she was wrong. I had seen that comet. I knew it as well as I knew my own face, my own hands. My own heart.”

“Writing is a process, a journey into memory and the soul.”

“part memory part distance remaining
mine in the ways that I learn to miss you”

“Memories were moving pictures in which meaning was constantly in flux. They were stories people told themselves.”

“It is sadder to find the past again and find it inadequate to the present than it is to have it elude you and remain forever a harmonious conception of memory.”

“Time moves in one direction, memory in another.”

“And the memories of all we have loved stay and come back to us in the evening of our life. They are not dead but sleep, and it is well to gather a treasure of them.”

“Memory fades, memory adjusts, memory conforms to what we think we remember.”

“Food is a gift and should be treated reverentially--romanced and ritualized and seasoned with memory.”

“Memories aren't stored in the heart or the head or even the soul, if you ask me, but in the spaces between any given two people.”

“That was what she really wanted. To forget so thoroughly she'd never have another memory again, the bitter so bitter you gave up the sweet.”

“When it comes to memories, the good and the bad never balance.”

“I want the same one, the way she always is, without failures, without fights, without bad memories.”

“Yesterday was a memory. Tomorrow was a hope. Today was another day to live and do one's best to love”

“For in the end, it is all about memory, its sources and its magnitude, and, of course, its consequences.”

“Part of the function of memory is to forget; the omni-retentive mind will break down and produce at best an idiot savant who can recite a telephone book, and at worst a person to whom every grudge and slight is as yesterday's.”

“In a way, looking back, it seemed a long, long time since she had been eighteen, but in another way her memories were so clear and vivid that it seemed like yesterday.”

“It is the experiences, the memories, the great triumphant joy of living to the fullest extent in which real meaning is found. God it's great to be alive! Thank you. Thank you.”

“Memory is the only thing that binds you to earlier selves; for the rest, you become an entirely different being every decade or so, sloughing off the old persona, renewing and moving on. You are not who you were, he told her, nor who you will be.”

“Childhood romances always seem so real, so enduring, when we are separated from the object of our affection. But usually, when we return, we find that our dreams and memories quiet surpassed reality.

-Lady Anne, Whitney's aunt”

“Scots have long memories, and they're not the most forgiving of people.”

“Experience had taught me that even the most precious memories fade with the passage of time.”

“Memory's images, once they are fixed in words, are erased.”

“Beautiful things grow to a certain height and then they fail and fade off, breathing out memories as they decay”

“Most people think that shadows follow, precede or surround beings or objects. The truth is that they also surround words, ideas, desires, deeds, impulses and memories.”

“Things pass, and the best we can do is to let them really go away. Getting rid of certain memories also means making some room for other memories to take their place.”

“People parted, years passed, they met again- and the meeting proved no reunion, offered no warm memories, only the acid knowledge that time had passed and things weren't as bright or attractive as they had been.”

“The work of memory collapses time.”

“Life is a memory, and then it is nothing.”

“I would never see her again, except in memory. She was here, and now she's gone. There is no middle ground. Probably is a word that you may find south of the border. But never, ever west of the sun.”

“It would disappear forever from her memory of Lydia, the way memories of a lost loved one always smooth and simplify themselves, shedding complexities like scales.”

“When his brain died, all of the memories
held in his gray matter, along with all of the knowledge he had acquired, would simply evaporate
in a flood of chemical reactions.”

“I was looking at the photographs and I started thinking that there was a time when these weren't memories.”

“There is simply too much injustice in the world. And too much remembering (of ancient grievances: Serbs, Irish) embitters. To make peace is to forget. To reconcile, it is necessary that memory be faulty and limited.”

“Believing there's no God means I can't really be forgiven except by kindness and faulty memories. That's good; it makes me want to be more thoughtful. I have to try to treat people right the first time around.”

“A scene should be selected by the writer for haunted-ness-of-mind interest.
If you're not haunted by something, as by a dream, a vision, or a memory, which are involuntary, you're not interested or even involved.”

“Moments of their secret life together burst like stars upon his memory.”

“Damn right I begrudge! I grudge every memory of yours that doesna hold me, and every tear ye've shed for another, and every second you've spent in another man's bed!”

“A memory, pressed into my heart like a leaf in a book.”

“You have a memory chip that small implanted in you,” he verified.
I nodded, guessing this was somewhat worse than having cooties.”

“I am prone to envy. It is one of my three default emotions, the others being greed and rage. I have also experienced compassion and generosity, but only fleetingly and usually while drunk, so I have little memory.”

“I know you: You’ll come find me again, you’ll come rescue me no matter what happens. You’ll come for me, and I’ll discover you all over again. I love you. I love you without the memories. I love you right now.”

“You know what a storyteller is, don't you? It's a person that has a good memory who hopes other people don't.”

“Every passion borders on the chaotic, but the collector's passion borders on the chaos of memories.”

“Touch has a memory.”

“Your soul is the priestess of memory, selecting, sifting, and ultimately gathering your vanishing days toward presence.”

“Precipitate as weather, she appeared from somewhere, then evaporated, leaving only memory.”

“In this world of memories, there's no need for strangers.
-Kenshin to Kaoru”

“You never know when you're making a memory”

“The most significant gifts are the ones most easily overlooked. Small, everyday blessings: woods, health, music, laughter, memories, books, family, friends, second chances, warm fireplaces, and all the footprints scattered throughout our days.”

“There are moments we return to, now and always. Family is like water - it has a memory of what it once filled, always trying to get back to the original stream.”

“Memories are forever.”

“Memory is the treasury and guardian of all things.”
— Cicero”

“I had only one desire: to leave, to walk, to die, whatever. I wanted to get away, never come back, disappear, melt away into the forest, the clouds, no longer have memories, forget, forget.”

“He thought of his remembrance of Jordan, thought of how it hurt to even look at Isabelle and Clary. Without memory, they were lost. And nobody wanted someone they loved to be lost.”

“I have a memory like an elephant. In fact, elephants often consult me.”

“I could bear the memory, but I could not bear the music that made the memory such a killing thing.”

“When you get older, it feels like happy memories and sad memories are pretty much the same thing. It is all just emotion in the end. And any of it can make you weep.”

“I had a vague memory of being that ridiculous at one time. Let he who hath never worn parachute pants cast the first stone.”

“[T]he only place on earth where immortality is provided is in libraries. This is the collective memory of humanity.”

“Is this really true? If we take an average day in the life of the average man we seem to see very little evidence of concern with the sciences and the arts. The average man gets up, goes to work, eats his meals, reads the newspapers, watches television, goes to the cinema, goes to bed, sleeps, wakes up, starts all over again. Unless we happen to be professional scientists, laboratory experiments and formulae have ceased to have any meaning for most of us; unless we happen to be poets or painters or musicians—or teachers of literature, painting, and music—the arts seem to us to be only the concern of schoolchildren. And yet people have said, and people still say, that the great glories of our civilisation are the scientists and artists. Ancient Greece is remembered because of mathematicians like Euclid and Pythagoras, because of poets like Homer and dramatists like Sophocles. In two thousand years all our generals and politicians may be forgotten, but Einstein and Madame Curie and Bernard Shaw and Stravinsky will keep the memory of our age alive.”

“This is your country. These are your houses. These are your cultivated fields and gardens, and your memories lie here. You are not going to leave your country, are you, just because you live hard there or because you have been weighed down by the injustices and humiliation? It has never been typical of the Serbian and Montenegrin people to yield before obstacles and to become demoralized when facing a problem, when coming upon hard times.”

“Of asphodel, that greeny flower,

::like a buttercup

::::upon its branching stem —

save that's green and wooden —

::I come, my sweet,

::::to sing to you.

We lived long together,

::a life filled,

::::if you will,

with flowers. So that

::I was cheered

::::when I first came to know

that there were flowers also

::in hell.

::::Today

I'm filled with the fading memory of those flowers

::that we both loved,

::::even to this poor

colorless thing —

::I saw it

::::when I was a child —

little prized among the living

::but the dead see,

::::asking among themselves:

What do I remember

::that was shaped

::::as this thing is shaped?
while our eyes fill
::with tears.
::::Of love, abiding love
it will be telling
::though too weak a wash of crimson
::::colors it
to make it wholly credible.
::There is something
::::something urgent
I have to say to you
::and you alone
::::but it must wait
while I drink in
::the joy of your approach,
::::perhaps for the last time.
And so
::with fear in my heart
::::I drag it out
and keep on talking
::for I dare not stop.”

“The loss of historical memory is restored in the very place where one has lost it.”

“…to harness and directed peaceful energy from the viewers under the mountain through a twenty foot, five pointed Texas Star Vortex which was hung between the two massive exterior columns on the balcony into the historically tarnished Dallas Dealy Plaza and book depository hoping to honor John F. Kennedy's memory.”

“I live cinema. I chose the cinema when I was very young, sixteen years old, and from then on my memories virtually coincide with the history of the cinema … I'm not a director with a personal style, I am simply cinema. I have grown up with and through cinema; everything that I've had in the way of education has been through the cinema; insofar as I'm interested in images, in books, in music, it's all due to the cinema.”

“We comprehend… that nuclear power is a real danger for mankind, that over-crowding of the planet is the greatest danger of all. We have understood that the destruction of the environment is another enormous danger. But I truly believe that the lack of adequate imagery is a danger of the same magnitude. It is as serious a defect as being without memory. What have we done to our images? What have we done to our embarrassed landscapes? I have said this before and will repeat it again as long as I am able to talk: if we do not develop adequate images we will die out like dinosaurs.”

“The bull does not know you, nor the fig tree,
nor the horses, nor the ants in your own house.
The child and the afternoon do not know you
because you have died forever.

The shoulder of the stone does not know you
nor the black silk on which you are crumbling.
Your silent memory does not know you
because you have died forever.

The autumn will come with conches,
misty grapes and clustered hills,
but no one will look into your eyes
because you have died forever.

Because you have died for ever,
like all the dead of the earth,
like all the dead who are forgotten
in a heap of lifeless dogs.

Nobody knows you. No. But I sing of you.
For posterity I sing of your profile and grace.
Of the signal maturity of your understanding.
Of your appetite for death and the taste of its mouth.
Of the sadness of your once valiant gaiety.”

“I know that I disagree with many other UML experts, but there is no magic about UML. If you can generate code from a model, then it is programming language. And UML is not a well-designed programming language.
The most important reason is that it lacks a well-defined point of view, partly by intent and partly because of the tyranny of the OMG standardization process that tries to provide everything to everybody. It doesn't have a well-defined underlying set of assumptions about memory, storage, concurrency, or almost anything else. How can you program in such a language?
The fact is that UML and other modelling language are not meant to be executable. The point of models is that they are imprecise and ambiguous. This drove many theoreticians crazy so they tried to make UML "precise", but models are imprecise for a reason: we leave out things that have a small effect so we can concentrate on the things that have big or global effects. That's how it works in physics models: you model the big effect (such as the gravitation from the sun) and then you treat the smaller effects as perturbation to the basic model (such as the effects of the planets on each other). If you tried to solve the entire set of equations directly in full detail, you couldn't do anything.”

“Music moves us, and we know not why;
We feel the tears, but cannot trace their source.
Is it the language of some other state,
Born of its memory? For what can wake
The soul's strong instinct of another world,
Like music?”

“Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.”

“If I forget, then it might as well never have happened. Memory is liberty.”

“I know it all —
All ye would ask. But ne'er shall hope be mine
Till the dread secret works its fatal will
In daylight visible, with wrath and scorn,
And ceaseless memory of forgotten things.
Then Jove shall learn what all his sulphurous bolts,
Soul-piercing torments, earthquakes, fiery plagues,
Disease, and loathsome, black deformity,
And all confounding shame, shall ne'er persuade
My voice to utter.”

“I had written a beautiful piece for today. It was a rant about how much I despise Halloween. It was witty, well-written and a shining example of a writer at the top of his form. Then I tried to save it, and my computer crashed. So I guess you won't get to read it. Out of all the people in the world, I am the only one who had the opportunity to read my brilliant Halloween article, and now the text is already fading from my cruel, cruel short-term memory, the paragraphs lost in a whirling sea of data, never to be seen again.”

“I went down to Captain Tony's to get out of the heat
When I heard a voice call out to me, "Son, come have a seat."
I had to search my memory as I looked into those eyes;
Our lives change like the weather but a legend never dies”

“My first memory of Nirvana was getting a cassette of demos, which ended up becoming Bleach. Everybody's response was that this was an amazing band and these were amazing songs. It was another indication that the Northwest had something special that you couldn't argue with.
It was pretty shocking to see a threepiece that sounded like that, and trying to get inside the head of a guy who writes a song like "Floyd the Barber" – where does the kernel of a song like that start?
The Seattle scene benefitted from an MTV culture, and it was because of the way Nirvana looked and presented themselves that created this kind of unanimous support worldwide. Rock music had become kind of hedonistic – 35-year-old men taking a helicopter to the stage and dating supermodels, and going out of their way to separate themselves from their audience. Nirvana, more than any other band, rocked way harder, had significant originality, while looking like guys you went to high school with. I think that was their secret. There was an inclusion that was long overdue, and it was what rock was supposed to be about.
The legend isn't simply going to be the way that he took his life; I believe it will always be the songs.”

“The right honorable gentlemen is indebted to his memory for his jests, and to his imagination for his facts.”