“You forget what you want to remember and remember what you would prefer to forget.”
Source: The Troubled Man
“It is so hard to forget what it is worse than useless to remember! If I am to be a thoroughfare, I prefer that it be of the mountain-brooks, the Parnassian streams, and not the town-sewers.”
Life Without Principle (1863)
Context: It is so hard to forget what it is worse than useless to remember! If I am to be a thoroughfare, I prefer that it be of the mountain-brooks, the Parnassian streams, and not the town-sewers. There is inspiration, that gossip which comes to the ear of the attentive mind from the courts of heaven. There is the profane and stale revelation of the bar-room and the police court. The same ear is fitted to receive both communications. Only the character of the hearer determines to which it shall be open, and to which closed. I believe that the mind can be permanently profaned by the habit of attending to trivial things, so that all our thoughts shall be tinged with triviality.
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Henry David Thoreau 385
1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitio… 1817–1862Related quotes
“I prefer to be loved for what I am than be loved for what I'm not ..."”
Dj Parisa
(1972) Youtuber & DJ
“I never said I do not remember, my grandmother corrects. I said I prefer to forget.”
Source: The Storyteller
Thomas Aquinas
(1225–1274) Italian Dominican scholastic philosopher of the Roman Catholic Church
Misattributed
Source: This quote, frequently attributed to Aquinas, is actually a paraphrase of a passage (itself an elaborate paraphrase of Augustine) by Ptolemy of Lucca in his continuation of an unfinished work by Aquinas. The passage from Ptolemy reads: "Thus, Augustine says that a whore acts in the world as the bilge in a ship or the sewer in a palace: 'Remove the sewer, and you will fill the palace with a stench.' Similarly, concerning the bilge, he says: 'Take away whores from the world, and you will fill it with sodomy.'" (Ptolemy of Lucca and Thomas Aquinas, On the Government of Rulers, trans. James M. Blythe. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997, 4. 14. 6). What Augustine actually wrote (in De ordine, 2. 4. 12) was simply: "Remove prostitutes from human affairs and you will unsettle everything on account of lusts." Only Book 1 and the first four chapters of Book 2 of On the Government of Rulers (De Regimine Principum) are by Aquinas. The rest of the work was written by Ptolemy. (It even mentions the coronation of Albert I of Hapsburg, an event that occurred in 1298, twenty-four years after Aquinas's death.) The quote comes from Book 4, which was definitely not written by Aquinas.
“Remembering. Forgetting. I'm not sure which is worse.”
Kelley Armstrong
(1968) Canadian writer
Source: The Calling
Nahum Tate
(1652–1715) Anglo-Irish poet and playwright
Dido and Aeneas (opera; music by Henry Purcell)
Edwin Hubble
(1889–1953) American astronomer
Hubble's reply when asked about his beliefs from a friend, as quoted in Edwin Hubble: Mariner of the Nebulae (1996) by Gale E. Christianson, p. 183.
“I'm impossible to forget, but I'm hard to remember.”
Cameron Crowe
(1957) Academy Award-winning American writer and film director
“What I hear, I forget. What I say, I remember. What I do, I understand.”
Laozi
(-604) semi-legendary Chinese figure, attributed to the 6th century, regarded as the author of the Tao Te Ching and fou…
This quotation has also been misattributed to Confucius.
Tell me and I [will] forget. Show me and I [will] remember. Involve me and I [will] understand.
不聞不若聞之，聞之不若見之，見之不若知之，知之不若行之；學至於行之而止矣
From Xun Zi 荀子
Misattributed