Memories and Recollections

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!

 

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

 

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

 

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

The dead don’t stay interested in us living people for very long. Gradually, gradually, they let go hold of the earth . . . and the ambitions they had . . . and the pleasures they had . . . and the things they suffered . . . and the people they loved. They get weaned away from earth—that’s the way I put it—weaned away.

May memory restore again and again

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.

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;

One day Lara went out and did not come back. . . . She died or vanished somewhere, forgotten as a nameless number on a list which was afterwards mislaid.

There is nothing in this world as invisible as a monument.