Nostalgia

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

Life…is like a cup of tea; the more heartily we drink, the sooner we reach the dregs.

 

Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean, Tears from the depth of some divine despair Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes, In looking on the happy autumn fields, And thinking of the days that are no more.

 

Dear as remember’d kisses after death, And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feign’d On lips that are for others; deep as love, Deep as first love, and wild with all regret; O Death in Life, the days that are no more.

 

But the tender grace of a day that is dead Will never come back to me.

 

Break, break, break, On thy cold gray stones, O Sea! And I would that my tongue could utter The thoughts that arise in me. O, well for the fisherman’s boy, That he shouts with his sister at play! O, well for the sailor lad, That he sings in his boat on the bay! And the stately ships go on To their haven under the hill; But O, for the touch of a vanish’d hand, And the sound of a voice that is still!

 

There is no time like the old time, when you and I were young.

 

Fugit inreparabile tempus .

What was the use of my having come from Oakland it was not natural to have come from there yes write about it if I like or anything if I like but not there, there is no there there.

Je regrette l’Europe aux anciens parapets!

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.

Youth's longing misconceived inconsistency.Those whom I deemedChanged to my kin, the friends of whom I dreamed,Have aged and lost our old affinity:One has to change to stay akin to me.

Whoever, in middle age, attempts to realize the wishes and hopes of his early youth, invariably deceives himself.

All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter into another!

The two things that nearly all of us have thoroughly and really been through are childhood and youth. And though we would not have them back again on any account, we feel that they are both beautiful, because we have drunk them dry.

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

Just as we outgrow a pair of trousers, we outgrow acquaintances, libraries, principles, etc., at times before they’re worn out and at times—and this is the worst of all—before we have new ones.

For most of my reading I go back to the old ones – for comfort.

All of one’s contemporaries and aging friends are living in a delicate balance, and one feels that one’s own consciousness is no longer as brightly lit as it once was. But then, twilight with its more subdued colors has its charms as well.

I never saw a man who looked

Mais où sont les neiges d’antan?

The true paradises are the paradises that we have lost.

And suddenly the memory revealed itself.

No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes, than a public library.