Forgetfulness Quotes - Page 2

• To forget oneself is to be happy.

  Robert Louis Stevenson

  Forget, Oneself

  Robert Louis Stevenson (2016). “Memories and Portraits: Stevenson's Vol. 21”, p.17, VM eBooks

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• Lethe, the river of oblivion, rolls his watery labyrinth, which whoso drinks forgets both joy and grief.

  John Milton

  Grief, Rivers, Joy

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• She threw into the wine which they were drinking a drug which takes away grief and passion and brings forgetfulness of all ills

  Homer

  Drinking, Grief, Passion

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• All the things one has forgotten scream for help in dreams.

  Elias Canetti

  Inspirational, Dream, Helping

  Die Provinz der Menschen (The Human Province, 1973) p. 269

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• Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting. Not in entire forgetfulness, and not in utter nakedness, but trailing clouds of glory do we come.

  William Wordsworth

  Inspirational, Baby, Sleep

  "Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood" l. 58 (1807)

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• We do not always remember the things that do no credit to us. We justify them, cover them in bright lies or with the thick dust of forgetfulness. All of the things that Shadow had done in his life of which he was not proud, all the things he wished he had done otherwise or left undone, came at him then in a swirling storm of guilt and regret and shame, and he had nowhere to hide from them. He was as naked and as open as a corpse on a table, and dark Anubis the jackal god was his prosector and his prosecutor and his persecutor.

  Neil Gaiman

  Regret, Lying, Dark

  "American Gods". Book by Neil Gaiman, 2001.

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• Forgetfulness heals everything and song is the most beautiful manner of forgetting, for in song man feels only what he loves.

  Ivo Andric

  Beautiful, Song, Men

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• So it ends as I guessed it would,' his thoughts said, even as it fluttered away; and it laughed a little within him ere it fled, almost gay it seemed to be casting off all doubt and care and fear. And even as it winged away into forgetfulness it heard voices, and they seemed to be crying in some forgotten world far above: 'The eagles are coming! The eagles are coming!' For one moment more Pippin's thought hovered. "Bilbo! But no! That came in his tale, long long ago. This is my tale, and it ended now. Good-bye!' And his thought fled far away and his eyes saw no more.

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  Eye, Gay, Eagles

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• The more language is a living operation, the less we are aware of it. Thus it follows from the self-forgetfulness of language that its real being consists in what is said in it.

  Hans-Georg Gadamer

  Real, Self, Language

  Hans-Georg Gadamer (2008). “Philosophical Hermeneutics”, p.65, Univ of California Press

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• We bury love; Forgetfulness grows over it like grass: That is a thing to weep for, not the dead.

  Alexander Smith

  Grass, Forgetful, Grows

  Alexander Smith (1909). “The Poetical Works of Alexander Smith”

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• Mistakes remember'd are not faults forgot.

  Robert Henry Newell

  Mistake, Faults, Remember

  Robert Henry Newell (1871). “Versatilities”, p.186

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• If e'er I win a parting token,
  'Tis something that has lost its power--
  A chain that has been used and broken,
  A ruin'd glove, a faded flower;
  Something that makes my pleasure less,
  Something that means--forgetfulness.

  Nathaniel Parker Willis

  Flower, Mean, Winning

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• Forget thyself to marble.

  John Milton

  Forget, Marble, Thyself

  John Milton, Henry John Todd (1852). “The Poetical Works of John Milton: With Notes of Various Authors; and with Some Account of the Life and Writings of Milton, Derived Principally from Original Documents in Her Majesty's State-paper Office”, p.412

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• There is nothing--no, nothing--innocent or good, that dies and is forgotten; let us hold to that faith or none. An infant, a prattling child, dying in the cradle, will live again in the better thoughts of those that loved it, and play its part through them in the redeeming actions of the world, though its body be burnt to ashes or drowned in the deep sea.

  Charles Dickens

  Children, Sea, Play

  Charles Dickens (1841). “The Old Curiosity Shop”, p.102, B Times

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• Pleasure is a sort of oblivion, a forgetfulness. Pain is remembrance, you cannot forget pain.

  Rajneesh

  Pain, Remembrance, Forget

  Osho, Rajneesh (Bhagwan Shree), Yoga Rabiya (Ma.), Ananda Vandana (Ma.), Prem Pankaja (Ma.) (1978). “The Discipline of Transcendence: Discourses on the Forty-two Sutras of Buddha”

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• There is some pleasure even in words, when they bring forgetfulness of present miseries.

  Sophocles

  Misery, Pleasure

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• For with eyes made clear by many tears, and a heart softened by the tenderest sorrow, she recognized the beauty of her sister's life—uneventful, unambitious, yet full of the genuine virtues which 'smell sweet, and blossom in the dust', the self-forgetfulness that makes the humblest on earth remembered soonest in heaven, the true success which is possible to all.

  Louisa May Alcott

  Sweet, Heart, Eye

  Louisa May Alcott (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Louisa May Alcott (Illustrated)”, p.586, Delphi Classics

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• For who, to dumb forgetfulness a prey, This pleasing anxious being e'er resign'd, Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day, Nor cast one longing ling'ring look behind?

  Thomas Gray

  Anxiety, Dumb, Cheerful

  'Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard' (1751) l. 85

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• I never forgive, but I always forget.

  Arthur Balfour

  Forgiveness, Forgiving, Never Forget

  In R. Blake Conservative Party (1970) ch. 7

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• The long-term accommodation that protects marriage and other such relationships is ... forgetfulness.

  Alice Walker

  Long, Accommodations, Protect

  Alice Walker (1994). “The Complete Stories”

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• Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting; The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star, Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar.

  William Wordsworth

  Stars, Sleep, Afterlife

  "Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood" l. 58 (1807)

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• I have never seen such extreme partisanship, such bitter partisanship, and such forgetfulness of the fate of our fathers and of the Constitution.

  Robert Byrd

  Father, Fate, Bitterness

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• What makes life worth living? Better surely, to yield to the stain of suicide blood in me and seek forgetfulness in the embrace of cold dark death.

  Zane Grey

  Life, Suicide, Dark

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• And when he is out of sight, quickly also he is out of mind.

  Thomas a Kempis

  Sight, Mind

  'De Imitatione Christi' bk. 1, ch. 23, sect. 1

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• Who is the Forgotten Man? He is the clean, quiet, virtuous, domestic citizen, who pays his debts and his taxes and is never heard of out of his little circle.

  William Graham Sumner

  Men, Circles, Citizens

  William Graham Sumner (2007). “The Forgotten Man and Other Essays”, p.480, Cosimo, Inc.

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