Quotes about Memory

I suppose in the end what we have to offer is only what we've lost.

Things separate from their stories have no meaning. They are only shapes of a certain size and color. A certain weight. When their meaning has become lost to us they no longer have even a name.

Memories dim with age. There is no repository for our images. The loved ones who visit us in dreams are strangers. To even see aright is effort. We seek some witness but the world will not provide one. This is the third history. It is the history that each man makes alone out of what is left to him. Bits of wreckage. Some bones. The words of the dead. How make a world of this? How live in that world once made?

Death is what the living carry with them. A state of dread, like some uncanny foretaste of a bitter memory. But the dead do not remember and nothingness is not a curse. Far from it.

The straight and the winding way are one and now that you are here what do the years count since last we two met together? Men's memories are uncertain and the past that was differs little from the past that was not.

Where is Shelby, whom you left to the mercies of Elias in the desert, and where is Tate whom you abandoned in the mountains? Where are the ladies, ah the fair and tender ladies with whom you danced at the governor's ball when you were a hero anointed with the blood of the enemies of the republic you'd elected to defend? -Cormac mcCarthy, Blood Meridian

She had passed by. He felt as if he were walking again in a far world, not Cossethay, a far world, the fragile reality. He went on, quiet, suspended, rarefied. He could not bear to think or to speak, nor make any sound or sign, nor change his fixed motion. He could scarcely bear to think of her face. He moved within the knowledge of her, in the world that was beyond reality.

To recall a voter's name is statesmanship. To forget it is oblivion.

not one escaped to tell the fall of Alamo, The hundred & fifty are dumb yet at Alamo.

What stays with you longest and deepest? Of curious panics, of hard-fought engagements or sieges tremendous what deepest remains?

Here I sit gossiping in the early candle-light of old age—and my book—casting backward glances over our travel'd road.

If any person desires to think, he must possess memory, imagination and reasoning power; but the Christian has presently lost these powers, hence is unable to think. He cannot create, deduce or recollect, nor can he compare, judge and apprehend. Therefore he cannot think. And should he attempt to do so he experiences a kind of dazed sensation which stifles any productive thought.