Recollection Quotes - Page 2

• You won't be free from guilt if you are constantly replaying the negative memories of your past. If you're going to replay anything, replay your victories!

  Joel Osteen

  Memories, Past, Victory

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• A poet ought not to pick nature's pocket. Let him borrow, and so borrow as to repay by the very act of borrowing. Examine nature accurately, but write from recollection, and trust more to the imagination than the memory.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Memories, Writing, Imagination

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1835). “Specimens of the table talk”, p.136

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• Recollection is not something that I can summon up, it simply comes and I am the servant of it.

  Edna O'Brien

  Servant, I Can

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• The present time is seldom able to fill desire or imagination with immediate enjoyment, and we are forced to supply its deficiencies by recollection or anticipation.

  Samuel Johnson

  Past, Imagination, Desire

  Samuel Johnson, Elizabeth Carter, Samuel Richardson, Catherine Talbot (1825). “The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752”, p.344

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• My first recollection is that of a bugle call.

  Douglas MacArthur

  Firsts

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• The man with a clear conscience probably has a poor memory.

  Oscar Wilde

  Memories, Men, Poor

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• Of course a poem is a two-way street. No poem is any good if it doesn't suggest to the reader things from his own mind and recollection that he will read into it, and will add to what the poet has suggested. But I do think poetry readings are very important.

  James Laughlin

  Reading, Thinking, Two

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• By itself, an ordinary snapshot is no less banal than the petite madeleine in Proust's In Search of Lost Time... but as goad to memory, it is often the first integer in a sequence of recollections that has the power to deny time for the sake of love.

  Michael Lesy

  Memories, Sake, Firsts

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• One can begin a picture and carry it through and stop it and do nothing about the title at all.

  William Baziotes

  Titles

  William Baziotes (1978). “William Baziotes: A Retrospective Exhibition : an Exhibition”

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• Drop the last year into the silent limbo of the past. Let it go, for it was imperfect, and thank God that it can go.

  Brooks Atkinson

  New Year, Memories, Holiday

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• To have given pleasure to one human being is a recollection that sweetens life.

  Agnes Repplier

  Pleasure, Given, Humans

  Agnes Repplier (1891). “Points of View”, Boston Houghton, Mifflin 1893.

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• Despite our preparation, indeed, despite our age, [the death of a parent] dislodges things deep in us, sets off reactions that surprise us and may cut free memories and feelings that we thought had gone to ground long ago. We might, in that indeterminate period they call mourning, be in a submarine, silent on the ocean's bed, aware of the depth charges, now near and now far, buffeting us with recollections.

  Joan Didion

  Memories, Ocean, Cutting

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• Let the tears which fell, and the broken words which were exchanged in the long close embrace between the orphans, be sacred. A father, sister, and mother, were gained, and lost, in that one moment. Joy and grief were mingled in the cup; but there were no bitter tears: for even grief arose so softened, and clothed in such sweet and tender recollections, that it became a solemn pleasure, and lost all character of pain.

  Charles Dickens

  Mother, Sweet, Pain

  Charles Dickens (1839). “Oliver Twist”, p.205

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• In love, unlike most other passions, the recollection of what you have had and lost is always better than what you can hope for in the future.

  Stendhal

  Love, Broken Heart, Passion

  Stendhal (1957). “Love”, Merlin Pr

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• The idol of today pushes the hero of yesterday out of our recollection; and will, in turn, be supplanted by his successor of tomorrow.

  Washington Irving

  Sports, Hero, Idols

  Washington Irving (2006). “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Other Stories From the Sketch Book”, p.144, Penguin

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• When everything is dark, when we are surrounded by despairing voices, when we do not see any exits, then we can find salvation in a remembered love, a love which is not simply a recollection of a bygone past but a living force which sustains us in the present. Through memory, love transcends the limits of time and offers hope at any moment of our lives.

  Henri Nouwen

  Memories, Dark, Grieving

  Henri J. M. Nouwen (2017). “You are the Beloved: Daily Meditations for Spiritual Living”, Hachette UK

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• Are there not some places where we seem to breathe sadness? — why, we cannot tell. It is a chain of recollections — an idea which carries you back to other times, to other places — which, very likely, have no connection with the present time and place.

  Alexandre Dumas

  Sadness, Ideas, Connections

  Alexandre Dumas (2013). “Delphi Works of Alexandre Dumas (Illustrated)”, p.3681, Delphi Classics

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• We humans are different - our brains are built not to fix memories in stone but rather to transform them, our recollections in their retelling.

  Mira Bartok

  Memories, Brain, Different

  Mira Bartok (2011). “The Memory Palace: A Memoir”, p.29, Simon and Schuster

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• If any person wants to see clearly just how much she has changed - whether for better or worse - let her revisit after some lapse of time any place where she has ones lived. She will meet her former self at every turn, with every familiar face, in every old recollection ... She will see how much she has gained in some respects, how much she has lost - irretrievably lost - in others.

  Lucy Maud Montgomery

  Self, Lapses, Want

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• The instant of birth is exquisite. Pain and joy are one at this moment. Ever after, the dim recollection is so sweet that we speak to our children with a gratitude they never understand.

  Madeline Tiger Bass

  Inspiring, Gratitude, Sweet

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• Cold as winter, strong as stone; She faced the darkness all alone. A silver goddess; a reflection. A mirage; a recollection. No return; no turning back. The past is gone, the future, black. Serpents gather in their nest, And she stands above the rest. Shadows hunt; she hunts the shadow. The moon is risen; she stands below. She views her world through the eyes of others. Black and white; there are no colors, As she looks down upon a shattered youth. A shattered mirror shows a shattered truth.

  Amelia Atwater-Rhodes

  Strong, Eye, Black And White

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• I have a photographic memory; I just haven't developed it yet.

  Jonathan Winters

  Memories, Havens, Photographic Memory

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• Memories are like a still life painted by ten different student artists: some will be blue-based; others red; some will be as stark as Picasso and others as rich as Rembrandt; some will be foreshortened and others distant. Recollections are in the eye of the beholder; no two held up side by side will ever quite match.

  Jodi Picoult

  Memories, Eye, Artist

  Jodi Picoult (2007). “Vanishing acts”, p.497, Simon and Schuster

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• The truth is impossible to comprehend even when one is willing to tell it. For the truth resides in memory and memory is clouded with repression and a desire to embellish. The recollections of any individual are conditioned by the general truths to which he or she has tried to live. To recall an event is to interpret it, so the truth is altered by the very act of remembering. Therefore the truth, like God, does not exist - only the search for it.

  Frank Hardy

  Art, Memories, Desire

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• True giving is a thoroughly joyous thing to do. We experience happiness when we form the intention to give, in the actual act of giving, and in the recollection of the fact that we have given. Generosity is a celebration. When we give something to someone we feel connected to them, and our commitment to the path of peace and awareness deepens.

  Sharon Salzberg

  Commitment, Generosity, Giving

  Sharon Salzberg (1999). “A Heart as Wide as the World”, p.187, Shambhala Publications

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