“The music was like the memory of joys that are past, pleasant and mournful to the soul.”

—  James Macpherson

"The Death of Cuthullin"
The Poems of Ossian

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The music was like the memory of joys that are past, pleasant and mournful to the soul." by James Macpherson?
James Macpherson photo
James Macpherson46
Scottish writer, poet, translator, and politician 1736–1796

Related quotes

Alfred, Lord Tennyson photo

“Whate'er thy joys, they vanish with the day:
Whate'er thy griefs, in sleep they fade away,
To sleep! to sleep!
Sleep, mournful heart, and let the past be past:
Sleep, happy soul, all life will sleep at last.”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson The Foresters

Song, Act I, Scene ii
The Foresters, Robin Hood and Maid Marion (1892)

Margaret Junkin Preston photo

“The pure memories given
To help our joy on earth, when earth is past,
Shall help our joy in heaven.”

Margaret Junkin Preston (1820–1897) American writer

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 407.

Tom Robbins photo

“Things. Cosas. Things attach themselves like leeches to the human soul, then they bleed out the sweetness and the music and the primordial joy of being unencumbered upon the land.”

Tom Robbins Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates

Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates (2000)

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow photo

“The leaves of memory seemed to make
A mournful rustling in the dark.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) American poet

The Fire of Drift-wood, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

“The voice so filled with nostalgia that you could almost see the memories floating through the blue smoke, memories not only of music and joy and youth, but perhaps, of dreams. They listened to the music, each hearing it in his own way, feeling relaxed and a part of the music, a part of each other, and almost a part of the world.”

Hubert Selby Jr. Requiem for a Dream

Source: Requiem for a Dream

Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo

“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?”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Erinna
The Golden Violet (1827)

China Miéville photo

“Scars are memory. Like sutures. They stitch the past to me.”

China Miéville book The Scar

Source: The Scar

“Life's for living, not for mourning … Live in the present, not the past.”

Susan Howatch book The Wheel of Fortune

The Wheel of Fortune (1984), Part 6: Hal

Thomas Campbell photo

“While Memory watches o'er the sad review
Of joys that faded like the morning dew.”

Thomas Campbell (1777–1844) British writer

Part II, line 45
Pleasures of Hope (1799)

Eliza Calvert Hall photo

“Patchwork? Ah, no! It was memory, imagination, history, biography, joy, sorrow, philosophy, religion, romance, realism, life, love and death; and over all, like a halo, the love of the artist for his work and the soul's longing for earthly immortality.”

Eliza Calvert Hall (1856–1935) American author, women's rights advocate and suffragist

Hall, Eliza Calvert. Aunt Jane of Kentucky. Boston: Little, Brown, and Co, 1907. Aunt Jane's Album p. 82.
Hall, Eliza Calvert, and Melody Graulich. Aunt Jane of Kentucky. Masterworks of literature series. Albany, NY: NCUP, 1992. In the reprinted edition, Graulich discusses the quote on page xxiv.
Aunt Jane of Kentucky (1907)

Related topics