Memories and Recollections

There is nothing like the dead cold hand of the Past to take down our tumid egotism and lead us into the solemn flow of the life of our race.

And suddenly the memory revealed itself. The taste was that of the little piece of madeleine which . . . my aunt Léonie used to give me, dipping it first in her own cup of tea or tisane.

Nothing can be so perfect while we possess it as it will seem when remembered.

Of childish days is upon me, my manhood is cast Down in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a child for the past.

 

It doesn’t matter who my father was; it matters who I remember he was.

There are perhaps no days of our childhood we lived so fully as those we believe we left without having lived them: those we spent with a favorite book.

One day, in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful.

And suddenly the memory revealed itself.

The true paradises are the paradises that we have lost.

The law, wherein, as in a magic mirror, we see reflected, not only our own lives, but the lives of all men that have been!

 

Oh better than the minting / Of a gold-crowned king / Is the safe-kept memory / Of a lovely thing.

One cannot help using his early friends as the seaman uses the log, to mark his progress.

Unless we remember we cannot understand.

 

The world has changed. I see it in the water. I feel it in the Earth. I smell it in the air. Much that once was is lost, for none now live who remember it. J. R. R.

Women still remember the first kiss after men have forgotten the last.

Men forget but never forgive. Women forgive but never forget.

Any fool knows men and women think differently at times, but the biggest difference is this. Men forget, but never forgive; women forgive, but never forget.

Dear as remembered kisses after death.

 

Petersburg! I still possess a list of addresses, Which will help me to hear the voices of the dead.

 

Cold in the earth—and fifteen wild Decembers From those brown hills have melted into spring.

 

Do we indeed desire the dead Should still be near us at our side?

 

This is the truth the poet sings, That a sorrow’s crown of sorrow is remembering happier things.

 

Much have I seen and known; cities of men And manners, climates, councils, governments, Myself not least, but honor’d of them all; And drunk delight of battle with my peers, Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy. I am a part of all that I have met; Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough Gleams that untravel’d world.

 

Though nothing can bring back the hour