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. . [QUOTES FOLLOW LINKS] see: CHANGE GOOD OLD DAYS THE MIND NOSTALGIA PAST (THE) PHOTOGRAPHS REMEMBERING STORIES TIME YESTERDAY --- Memory is the mother of all wisdom. --Aeschylus (525456 B.C.) Greek tragic dramatist. Quoted in Edmund Henry Barker _Classical Recreations: Interspersed with Much Biblical Criticism_ [1812]. The older I get, the faster I was. --Charles Barkley (b. 1963) American professional basketball player. Bob Costa television interview [22 January 1995]. Memory can glean, but can never renew. It brings us joys faint as is the perfume of the flowers, faded and dried, of the summer that is gone. --Henry Ward Beecher (18131887) American Congregational minister; brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe, son of Lyman Beecher. In Henry Ward Beecher and Edna Dean Proctor, _Life Thoughts: Gathered From the Extemporaneous Discourses of Henry Ward Beecher_, p. 27 [1858]. Everybody needs his memories. They keep the wolf of insignificance from the door. --Saul Bellow (19152005) Canadian novelist. _Mr. Sammler's Planet_ [1970] - In every kind of adversity, the bitterest part of a man's affliction is to remember that he once was happy. --Boethius [Anicius Manlius Severinus] (480?524) Roman scholar and Christian philosopher. _The Consolation of Philosophy_ [c. 524, written in prison while awaiting execution.] & see: . . . Nessun maggior dolore, Che ricordarsi del tempo felice Nella miseria. (There is no greater pain than to remember a happy time when one is in misery.) --Dante Alighieri (12651321) Italian poet, literary theorist, and moral philosopher. _La dinina commedia_ (The Divine Comedy) [c. 13101321] "Inferno" - If there is any substitute for love, it is memory. --Joseph Brodsky [Iosif Aleksandrovich Brodsky] (19401996) Russian-born American poet and winner of the 1987 Nobel Prize for Literature. _Less Than One_ [1986] You have to begin to lose your memory, if only in bits and pieces, to realize that memory is what makes our lives. Life without memory is no life at all, just as an intelligence without the possibility of expression is not really an intelligence. Our memory is our coherence, our reason, our feeling, even our action. Without it, we are nothing. --Luis Buρuel (19001983) Spanish director and filmmaker. _My Last Sigh_, ch. 1 [1983] We'll tak a cup o'kindness yet, For auld lang syne. --Robert Burns (17591796) Scottish poet and songwriter. "Auld Lang Syne" [1796] - It seems to me I've heard that song before, It's from an old familiar score; I know it well, that melody. It's funny how a theme Recalls a favorite dream. A dream that brought you so close to me. I know each word, Because I've heard that song before; The music said: "for evermore." For evermore's a memory. Please have them play it again, And I'll remember just when I heard that lovely song before. --Sammy Cahn (19131993) American songwriter. "I've Heard That Song Before" [music by Jule Styne] - To live in the hearts we leave Is not to die. --Thomas Campbell (17771844) Scottish poet. "Hallowed Ground" [1825] The life of the dead consists in being present in the minds of the living. --Marcus Tullius Cicero (10643 BC) Roman orator and statesman. _Orationes Phillipiae_ [c. 60 B.C.] I will not be revenged, and this I owe to my enemy; but I will remember, and this I owe to myself. --C.C. Colton (17801832) English clergyman and writer. _Lacon: or, Many Things in Few Words_, XXXV [1820] How cruelly sweet the echoes that start When memory plays an old tune on the heart. --Eliza Cook (18181889) English poet. _Lays of the Wild Harp_ [1835] - As far back as there are records of human intelligence, the most prized mental gift has been a well-cultivated memory. My grandfather at seventy could still recall passages from the three thousand lines of the Illiad he had to learn by heart in Greek to graduate from high school. Whenever he did so, a look of pride settled on his features, as his unfocused eyes ranged over the horizon. With each unfolding cadence, his mind returned to the years of his youth. The words evoked experiences he had had when he first learned them; remembering poetry was for him a form of time travel. For people in his generation, knowledge was still synonymous with memorization. Only in the past century, as written records have become less expensive and more easily available, has the importance of remembering dramatically declined. Nowadays a good memory is considered useless except for performing on some game shows or for playing Trivial Pursuit. --Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (b. 1934) Psychology professor at the University of Chicago. _Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience_ [1990], "The Flow of Thought" - - The memory of those who lie below passes away so soon. At first they tend them, morning, noon, and night; they soon begin to come less frequently; from once a day, to once a week; from once a week to once a month; then at long and uncertain intervals; then, not at all. --Charles Dickens (18121870) English novelist. _The Old Curiosity Shop_, ch. 54 [1841] The dreams of childhood its airy fables; it's graceful, beautiful, humane, impossible adornments of the world beyond: so good to be believed in once, so good to be remembered when outgrown. --Charles Dickens (18121870) English novelist. _Hard Times_, bk. II, ch. 9 [1854] - If the days grow dark, if care and pain Press close and sharp on heart and brain; Then lovely pictures still shall bloom, Upon the walls of memory's room. --Charles Monroe Dickinson (18421924) American author, journalist, and diplomat. _My Burdens_ Like all great travellers, I have seen more than I remember, and remember more than I have seen. --Benjamin Disraeli (18041881) British Tory statesman, novelist, and Prime Minister [1868, 1874-80]. Quoted in "Macmillan's Magazine" [June 1881]. I have forgot much, Cynara! Gone with the wind. --Ernest Dowson (18671900) English poet. "Non Sum Qualis Eram" (I am not what I was.) [1896] A photograph never grows old. You and I change, people change all through the months and years, but a photograph always remains the same. How nice to look at a photograph of mother or father taken many years ago. You see them as you remember them. But as people live on, they change completely. That is why I think a photograph can be kind. --Albert Einstein (18791955) German-American physicist. Quoted in Alan Windsor Richards _Einstein As I Knew Him_ [1979]. - - There's no disappointment in memory, and one's exaggerations are always on the good side. --George Eliot [Mary Ann Evans] (18191880) English novelist. _Daniel Deronda_, ch. XXXV [1876] [Referring to her estranged brother:] His years with others must the sweeter be For those brief days he spent in loving me. --George Eliot [Mary Ann Evans] (18191880) English novelist. "Brother and Sister", st. IX - So she went into the garden to cut a cabbage leaf to make an apple pie; and at the same time a great she-bear, coming up the street pops its head into the shop. 'What! no soap?' So he died, and she very imprudently married the barber; and there were present the Picninnies, and the Joblillies, and the Grand Panjandrum himself, with the little round button at top, and they all fell to playing the game of catch as catch can, till the gunpowder ran out at the heels of their boots. --Samuel Foote (17201777) English dramatist and actor. Nonsense written to test the boasted memory of Charles Macklin. Creditors have better memories than debtors. --Benjamin Franklin (17061790) American politician, inventor, and scientist. _Poor Richard's Almanack_ [1736] - We hold reunions, not for the dead, for there is nothing in all the earth that you and I can do for the dead. They are past our help and past our praise. We can add to them no glory and we can give to them no immortality. They do not need us, but forever and forever more we need them. --James A. Garfield (18311881) 20th President of the United States [1881]. Speech in Geneva, Ohio [3 August 1880]. The memory of all that No, No! They can't take that away from me. --Ira Gershwin (18961983) American songwriter. "They Can't Take That Away from Me" (Song from the 1937 musical _Shall We Dance?_) The memories of my family outings are still a source of strength to me. I remember we'd all pile into the car I forget what kind it was and drive and drive. I'm not sure where we'd go, but I think there were some trees there. The smell of something was strong in the air as we played whatever sport we played. I remember a bigger, older guy we called "Dad." We'd eat some stuff, or not, and then I think we went home. I guess some things never leave you. --Jack Handey (b. 1949) American comedian and comedy writer. _Deep Thoughts_ [1993] Yesterdays, Yesterdays, Days I knew as happy sweet sequester'd days. Olden days, Golden days, Days of mad romance and love. Then gay youth was mine, Truth was mine, Joyous, free and flaming life forsooth was mine. Sad am I, Glad am I, For today I'm dreaming of Yesterdays. --Otto Harbach (18731963) American lyricist. "Yesterdays" [1933 song], music by Jerome Kern. - Verse 1 Is this the little girl I carried? Is this the little boy at play? I don't remember growing older. When did they? When did she get to be a beauty? When did he grow to be so tall? Wasn't it yesterday when they were small? Refrain Sunrise, sunset, Sunrise, sunset, Swiftly flow the days; Seedlings turn overnight to sunflow'rs, Blossoming even as we gaze. Sunrise, sunset, Sunrise, sunset, Swiftly fly the years; One season following another, Laden with happiness and tears. Verse 2 Now is the little boy a bridegroom, Now is the little girl a bride. Under the canopy I see them, Side by side. Place the gold ring around her finger, Share the sweet wine and break the glass; Soon the full circle will have come to pass. --Sheldon Harnick (b. 1924) American lyricist. "Sunrise, Sunset" 1964 song from the stage production of _Fiddler on the Roof_ w/music by Jerry Bock. - Every man who has lived for fifty years has buried a whole world or even two; he has grown used to its disappearance and accustomed to the new scenery of another act: but suddenly the names and faces of a time long dead appear more and more often on his way, calling up series of shades and pictures kept somewhere, "just in case," in the endless catacombs of the memory, making him smile or sigh, and sometimes almost weep. --Aleksandr Ivanovich Herzen [or Hertzen] (18121870) Russian political thinker, activist, and writer. _My Past and Thoughts_ [1861-67] - Before we left Paris, my cousin came to me with something in her hand. 'I never knew who to give it to, it doesn't have any value, but I thought you, if anyone, might appreciate this.' Her hand was still closed. 'It was during the war; we had no food,' she said almost apologetically. She opened her hand. It was the innards of a pocket watch. 'This was your great-grandfather's watch,' she said. 'The gold case is missing. We had no food,' she said again, still apologizing; 'We sold the gold to feed ourselves. It has no value.' It has enormous value, it is both heart-breaking and heart-warming. It is the passing down of experience, proof of the power of memory. This watch is still in the war, it is still 1942, it is still six o'clock. In the airport I was stopped by the customs inspector. 'Have you anything to declare?' 'No.' 'What's this?' he said, poking at the watch carefully wrapped in my bag. I took it out and slowly unwrapped it. 'The skeleton of a watch.' 'Insignificant,' he said, passing me through. --A. M. Homes (b. 1961) Essay in _Over There_ [2003]. - - Into my heart an air that kills From yon far country blows: What are those blue remembered hills, What spires, what farms are those? That is the land of lost content, I see it shining plain, The happy highways where I went And cannot come again. --A.E. [Alfred Edward] Houseman (18591936) English classical scholar and poet. "A Shropshire Lad" no. 40, l. 5 [1896] - We must always have old memories and young hopes. --Arsθne Houssaye (18151896) French author. Quoted in Maturin M. Ballou _Pearls of Thought_, p. 172 [1882]. A retentive memory is a good thing, but the ability to forget is the true token of greatness. --Elbert Hubbard (18591915) American editor, publisher, and author who died in the sinking of the "Lusitania." _The Roycroft Dictionary and Book of Epigrams_ [1923] Your memory is a monster; you forget it doesn't. It simply files things away. It keeps things for you, or hides things from you and summons them to your recall with a will of its own. You think you have a memory; but it has you! --John Irving [John Wallace Blunt, Jr] (b. 1942) American author. _A Prayer for Owen Meany_ [1989] How we delight to build our recollections upon some basis of reality a place, a country, a local habitation how the events of life, as we look back upon them, have grown into the well-remembered background of the places where they fell upon us; Here is some sunny garden or summer lane, beautified and canonized forever, with the flood of a great joy; and here are dim and silent places, rooms always shadowed and dark to us, whatever they may be to others, where distress or death came once, and since then dwells forevermore. --Charles William Meredith van de Velde (18181898) _Narrative of a journey through Syria and Palestine in 1851 and 1852_ [1854] "The Holy Land" [When asked in court whether he had memory lapses:] Not that I recall. --Michael Jackson (19582009) American recording artist, entertainer, and businessman. Quoted in _The Sun_ [5 December 2002]. Let us sing of the days that are gone, Maggie, When you and I were young. --George Washington Johnson (18381917) Canadian teacher and poet. "When You and I Were Young, Maggie" [1866], w/music by James Austin Butterfield. Tisn't beauty, so to speak, nor good talk necessarily. It's just It. Some women'll stay in a man's memory if they once walked down a street. --Rudyard Kipling (18651936) English writer and poet. _Traffics and Discoveries_ [1904], "Mrs. Bathurst" I never hear parents exclaim impatiently, 'Children, you must not make so much noise,' that I do not think how soon the time may come when those parents would give *all the world*, could they hear once more the ringing laughter which once so disturbed them. --Abbott E. Kittredge (18341912) English clergyman. Quoted in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert _Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers_ [1895]. - [After the death of his mother, a 7-year-old asks his father about heaven:] 'She can't just end.' he said after a while. 'She was too nice to just end. She's got to be somewhere.' 'But that's just it, Benny. She *is* somewhere. Your mother goes on in you. You've got her genes, for one thing. You don't know what genes are, but you've got them: her hair, her eyes. ... And because she was a good person who taught you the right values, you'll grow up to be a good person as well, and you'll have kids of your own someday, and your mother will go on in them and in *their* children. Your mother still lives in our memories, too, and in the memories of her friends. Because she was kind to so many people, those people were shaped to some small degree by her kindness. They'll now and then remember her, and because of her they might be kinder to people, and that kindness goes on and on.' --Dean Koontz (b. 1945) American novelist. "Twilight of the Dawn" in _Strange Highways_ [1995]. - - Everyone complains of his memory, and no one complains of his judgment. --Franηois de La Rochefoucauld (16131680) French classical author. _Reflections; or, Sentences and Moral Maxims_ [1678]; maxim 89 How is it that our memory is good enough to retain the least triviality that happens to us, and yet not good enough to recollect how often we have told it to the same person? --Franηois de La Rochefoucauld (16131680) French classical author. _Reflections; or, Sentences and Moral Maxims_ [1678]; maxim 313 - Ah tell me not that memory Sheds gladness o'er the past; What is recalled by faded flowers Save that they did not last? Were it not better to forget, Than but remember and regret? --Letitia Elizabeth Landon (18021838) British poet and novelist. _Ethel Churchill; Or, The Two Brides_ [1837] There are places I remember All my life though some have changed, Some forever not for better Some have gone and some remain. All these places have their moments With lovers and friends I still can recall, Some are dead and some are living In my life I've loved them all. --John Lennon (19401980) & Paul McCartney (b. 1942) English pop singers and songwriters "In My Life" [song] released on _Rubber Soul_ [1965 album]. - HE: We met at nine. SHE: We met at eight. HE: I was on time. SHE: No, you were late. HE: Ah yes! I remember it well. We dined with friends. SHE: We dined alone. HE: A tenor sang. SHE: A baritone. HE: Ah yes! I remember it well. That dazzling April moon! SHE: There was none that night. And the month was June. HE: That's right! That's right! SHE: lt warms my heart To know that you Remember still The way you do. HE: Ah yes! I remember it well. How often I've thought of that Friday- SHE: -Monday HE: night, When we had our last rendezvous. And somehow I've foolishly wondered if you might By some chance be thinking of it too. That carriage ride ... SHE: You walked me home. HE: You lost a glove. SHE: I lost a comb. HE: Ah yes! I remember it well. That brilliant sky. SHE: We had some rain. HE: Those Russian songs. SHE: From sunny Spain. HE: Ah yes! I remember it well. You wore a gown of gold. SHE: I was all in blue. HE: Am I getting old? SHE: Oh no! Not you! How strong you were, How young and gay; A prince of love In ev'ryway. HE: Ah yes! I remember it well. --Alan Jay Lerner (19181986) American playwright and lyricist. "I Remember It Well," 1957 song from the film _Gigi_, music by Frederick Loewe (19011988). - A recent revelation occurred; frightening at first, but then logical and ultimately satisfying. The reality is, some of my memories aren't even mine. They've become intertwined with the memories of people close to me, and so my life isn't a singular recollection but rather that of a collective; a group memory. As stories are passed back and forth and built upon, events and experiences are caught in a blender of time, diced and chopped and fragmented into moments and my search to clarify those moments, to give them meaning, has become endless. --Barry Levinson (b. 1942) American screenwriter and film director. _Sixty-Six_ [2003] "Prologue" We spake of many a vanished scene, Of what we once had thought and said, Of what had been, and might have been, And who was changed, and who was dead; And all that fills the hearts of friends, When first they feel, with secret pain, Their lives thenceforth have separate ends, And never can be one again. --Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (18071882) American poet. "The Fire of Drift-Wood", l. 13 in _The Seaside and the Fireside_ [1850]. A good man doubles the length of his existence; to have lived so as to look back with pleasure on our past existence is to live twice. --Martial [Marcus Valerius Martialis] (38/41103) Roman poet. _Epigrams_, X, 23 [86-98] - A cigarette that bears a lipstick's traces, An airline ticket to romantic places, And still my heart has wings. These foolish things Remind me of you. A tinkling piano in the next apartment, Those stumbling words that told you what my heart meant, A fairground's painted swings, These foolish things Remind me of you. You came, you saw, you conquer'd me; When you did that to me, I knew somehow this had to be . The winds of March that make my heart a dancer, A telephone that rings, but who's to answer? Oh, how the ghost of you clings! These foolish things Remind me of you. Refrain 2 First daffodils and long excited cables, And candle lights on little corner tables, And still my heart has wings. These foolish things Remind me of you. The park at evening when the bell has sounded, The "lle de France" with all the gulls around it, The beauty that is Spring's, These foolish things Remind me of you. How strange, how sweet, To find you still; These things are dear to me, They seem to bring you near to me. The sigh of midnight trains in empty stations, Silk stockings thrown aside, dance invitations. Oh, how the ghost of you clings! These foolish things Remind me of you. Refrain 3 Gardenia perfume ling'ring on a pillow, Wild strawb'ries only seven francs a kilo, And still my heart has wings. These foolish things Remind me of you. The smile of Garbo and the scent of roses, The waiters whistling as the last bar closes, The song that Crosby sings, These foolish things Remind me of you. How strange, how sweet, To find you still; These things are dear to me, They seem to bring you near to me. The scent of smold'ring leaves, the wail of steamers, Two lovers on the street who walk like dreamers. Oh, how the ghost of you clings! These foolish things Remind me of you. --Eric Maschwitz (19011969) English songwriter. "These Foolish Things Remind Me of You" [1935 song], music by James Strachey and Harry Link. - And entering with relief some quiet place Where never fell his foot or shone his face I say, 'There is no memory of him here!' And so stand stricken, so remembering him. --Edna St. Vincent Millay (18921950) American poet. "Time does not bring relief" - When Time who steals our years away Shall steal our pleasures too, The mem'ry of the past will stay, And half our joys renew. --Thomas Moore (17791852) Irish poet, satirist, composer, and musician. Song, from _Juvenile Poems_ [1801]. You may break, you may shatter the vase, if you will, But the scent of the roses will hang round it still. --Thomas Moore (17791852) Irish poet, satirist, composer, and musician. "Farewell!but whenever" [1807] Oft in the stilly night, Ere Slumber's chain has bound me, Fond Memory brings the light Of other days around me: The smiles, the tears Of boyhood's years, The words of love then spoken; The eyes that shone, Now dimm'd and gone, The cheerful hearts now broken. Thus, in the stilly night, Ere Slumber's chain has bound me, Sad Memory brings the light Of other days around me. --Thomas Moore (17791852) Irish poet, satirist, composer, and musician. _National Airs_ [1815] "Oft in the Stilly Night" st. 1 - How confusing the beams from memory's lamp are; One day a bachelor, the next a grampa. What is the secret of the trick? How did I get so old so quick? --Ogden Nash (19021971) American writer of humorous poetry. _You Can't Get There From Here_ [1957], "Preface to the Past" - The advantage of a bad memory is that, several times over, one enjoys the same good things for the first time. --Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (18441900) German classical scholar, philosopher, and critic of culture. _Human, All Too Human_ [1878], tr. Marion Faber [1984] 'I have done that,' says my memory. 'I cannot have done that' says my pride, and remains adamant. At last memory yields. --Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (18441900) German classical scholar, philosopher, and critic of culture. _Beyond Good and Evil_ [1885-86], tr. William Kaufmann [1966]. - - The lightning bugs are back. They fly low to the ground as the lawn dissolves from green to black in the dusk. Seeing them, I can reconstruct a childhood: a hot night under tall trees; the Good Humor man, in his square white truck, the freezer smoky when he reaches inside for an ice cream. The lightning bugs trapped in empty jars with holes on top. 'Let them out,' our mother said, 'or they will die in there.' We were careless. We always forgot to open the jars. The bugs would be there in the morning, their yellow tails dim in the white light of the summer sun, pathetic as they lay on their backs. We were always horrified by what we had done. As night fell we shook them out and caught more. I relive the magic of the yellow light without the bright white of hindsight. The little flares in the darkness, a distillation of the kind of life we think we had, we wish we had, we want again. --Anna Quindlen (b. 1952) American writer. In "Reader's Digest" [1991]. I got a fortune cookie that said, 'To remember is to under-stand.' I have never forgotten it. A good judge remembers what it was like to be a lawyer. A good editor remembers being a writer. A good parent remembers what it was like to be a child. --Anna Quindlen (b. 1952) American writer. _Thinking Out Loud_ [1994] - I come back to the cottage in Santa Monica Canyon where Andree and I were poor and Happy together. Sometimes we Were hungry and stole vegetables From the neighbors' gardens. Sometimes we went out and gathered Cigarette butts by flashlight. But we went swimming every day, All year round. We had a dog Called Proclus, a vast yellow Mongrel, and a white cat named Cyprian. We had our first Joint art show, and they began To publish my poems in Paris. We worked under the low umbrella Of the acacia in the dooryard. Now I get out of the car And stand before the house in the dusk. The acacia blossoms powder the walk With little pills of gold wool. The odor is drowsy and thick In the early evening. The tree has grown twice as high As the roof. Inside, an old man And woman sit in the lamplight. I go back and drive away To Malibu Beach and sit With a gray haired childhood friend and Watch the full moon rise over the Long rollers wrinkling the dark bay. --Kenneth Rexroth (19051982) American poet. "Only Years" Memory is the only paradise from which we cannot be driven. --Jean Paul Richter (17631825) German novelist. Attributed in "The Argosy" [April 1897]. - Thanks for the memory Of candlelight and wine, Castles on the Rhine, The Parthenon and moments on the Hudson River Line. How lovely it was! Thanks for the memory Of rainy afternoons, Swingy Harlem tunes, And motor trips and burning lips and burning toast and prunes. How lovely it was! Many's the time that we feasted, And many's the time that we fasted. Oh well, it was swell while it lasted; We did have fun And no harm done. And thanks for the memory Of sunburns at the shore, Nights in Singapore. You might have been a headache but you never were a bore, So thank you so much. Awf'ly glad I met you, Cheerio and toodle-oo, And thank you so much! Thanks for the memory Of sentimental verse, Nothing in my purse, And chuckles when the preacher said "For better or for worse." How lovely it was! Thanks for the memory Of lingerie with lace, Pilsner by the case, And how I jumped the day you trumped my one and only ace. How lovely it was! We said good-bye with a highball, Then I got as high as a steeple. But we were intelligent people, No tears, no fuss, Hurray for us. So thanks for the memory, And strictly entre nous, Darling, how are you? And how are all the little dreams that never did come true? Awf'ly glad I met you, Cheerio and toodle-oo, And thank you so much! --Leo Robin (19001984) American songwriter. "Thanks For The Memory" [1937 song], music by Ralph Rainger. - Better by far you should forget and smile Than that you should remember and be sad. --Christina Rossetti [pseud. Ellen Alleyne] (18301894) English poet. _Goblin Market_ [1862], "Remember" The young have aspirations that never come to pass, the old have reminiscences of what never happened. --Saki [Hector Hugh Munro] (18701916) Scottish writer. _Reginald_ [1904] Here is how we are different from those wonderful plants and animals. As long as we can love each other and remember the feeling of love we had, we can die without ever really going away. All the love you created is still there. All the memories are still there. You live on in the hearts of everyone you have touched and nurtured while you were here. Death ends a life, not a relationship. --Morris "Morrie" S. Schwartz (19161995) American educator and author. In Mitch Albom _Tuesdays With Morrie_ [1997]. - Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot, But he'll remember, with advantages, What feats he did that day. --William Shakespeare (15641616) English dramatist. _King Henry V_, IV, iii [1598-99] Praising what is lost Makes the remembrance dear. --William Shakespeare (15641616) English dramatist. _All's Well That Ends Well_, V, iii [1602-04] When to the sessions of sweet silent thought I summon up remembrance of things past. --William Shakespeare (15641616) English dramatist. _Sonnet_, 30, l. I [1609] - Am I the person who used to wake in the middle of the night and laugh with the joy of living? Who worried about the existence of God, and danced with young ladies till long after daybreak? Who sang "Auld Lang Syne" and howled with sentiment, and more than once gazed at the full moon through a blur of great. romantic tears? --Logan Pearsall Smith (18651946) American-born man of letters. _More Trivia_ [1934] "Last Words" ^ The Monterey Peninsula [ ... ] is a beautiful place, clean, well run, and progressive. The beaches are clean where once they festered with fish guts and flies. The canneries which once put up a sickening stench are gone, their places filled with restaurants, antique shops, and the like. They fish for tourists now, not pilchards, and that species they are not likely to wipe out. And Carmel, begun by starveling writers and unwanted painters, is now a community of the well-to- do and the retired. If Carmel's founders should return, they could not afford to live there, but it wouldn't go that far. They would be instantly picked up as suspicious characters and deported over the city line. The place of my origin had changed, and having gone away I had not changed with it. In my memory it stood as it once did and its outward appearance confused and angered me. What I am about to tell must be the experience of very many in this nation where so many wander and come back. I called on old and valued friends. I thought their hair had receded a little more than mine. The greetings were enthusiastic. The memories flooded up. Old crimes and old triumphs were brought out and dusted. And suddenly my attention wandered, and looking at my ancient friend, I saw that his wandered also. And it was true what I had said to Johnny Garcia I was the ghost. My town had grown and changed and my friend along with it. Now returning, as changed to my friend as my town was to me, I distorted his picture, muddied his memory. When I went away I had died, and so became fixed and unchangeable. My return caused only confusion and uneasiness. Although they could not say it, my oId friends wanted me gone so that I could take my proper place in the pattern of remembrance and I wanted to go for the same reason. Tom Wolfe was right. You can't go home again because home has ceased to exist except in the mothballs of memory. --John Ernst Steinbeck (19021968) American novelist. _Travels With Charley_ [1962] ^ God gave His children memory that in life's garden there might be June roses in December. --Geoffrey Anketell Studdert-Kennedy (18831929) English Anglican priest and poet. _Roses in December_ Teach me not the art of remembering, but the art of forgetting, for I remember things I do not wish to remember, but I cannot forget the things I wish to forget. --Themistocles (524459 BC) Athenian politician and general. Quoted in Cicero _De Finibus_, bk. ii, ch.32. - Today man is, and tomorrow he will be seen no more. And being removed out of sight, quickly also he is out of mind. --Thomas a' Kempis (13801471) German ascetical writer. _The Imitation of Christ_, bk. 1, ch. 23, sec. 1 [c.1420] & see: Out of sight, out of mind. --Desiderius Erasmus (14691536) Dutch humanist and theologian. _Adagia_ [1500] - Fall is still the saddest part of the year for me. It's because the leaves are turning, and if the leaves are turning, we're getting ready to play Longview or Tyler. --Y.A. Tittle (b. 1926) American professional football player. At age 80; quoted in _Smithsonian_ [February 2007]. One Christmas was so much like the other in those days around the sea-torn corner now out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear the moment before sleep that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six. All the Christmases rolled down towards the two- tongued sea like a cold and headlong moon bundling down the sky that was our street. And they stopped at the rim of the ice-edged fish-freezing waves and I plunged my hands in the snow and bring out whatever I can find ... For dinner we had turkey and blazing puddings and after dinner the uncles sat in front of the fire, loosened all buttons, put their large moist hands over their watch chains, groaned a little, and slept. ... Auntie Hanna, who liked port, stood in the middle of the snowbound yard singing like a big- bosomed thrush ... Always on Christmas night there was music. An uncle played the fiddle, a cousin sang Cherry Ripe and another uncle sang Drake's Drum. --Dylan Thomas (19141953) Welsh poet. "Quite Early One Morning" in _A Child's Christmas in Wales_ [1954]. - After all these years I can picture that old time to myself now, just as it was then: the white town drowsing in the sunshine of a summer's morning; the streets empty, or pretty nearly so; one or two clerks sitting in front of the Water Street stores, with their splint-bottomed chairs tilted back against the wall, chins on breasts, hats slouched over their faces, asleep. ... the great Mississippi, the majestic, the magnificent Mississippi, rolling its mile-wide tide along, shining in the sun; the dense forest away on the other side. --Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (18351910) American humorist, novelist, journalist, and river pilot. _Life on the Mississippi_ [1883] When I was younger I could remember anything, whether it happened or not; but I am getting old, and soon I shall remember only the latter. --Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (18351910) American humorist, novelist, journalist, and river pilot. In Albert Bigelow Paine _Mark Twain: A Biography_ [1912]. - As a teenager in Montreal, Simon Plouffe became "addicted to numbers." Upon learning of a world record for memorizing pi, Plouffe set out to break it. On his first day Plouffe memorized 300 digits. ...Within six months he had memorized 4,096 digits of pi. .... Soon the record was more than 5,000. ... The current memorization record is well beyond his reach, he admits. The reigning champ is Hiroyuki Goto, who recited 42,195 digits in nine hours. --Bruce Watson _Smithsonian Magazine_ [2000] Curiosity is as much the parent of attention, as attention is of memory. --Richard Whately (17871863) English philosopher and theologian. "On the Acquisition of Knowledge" [May 1814] So here I sit in the early candle-light of old age I and my book casting backward glances over our travel'd road. --Walt Whitman (18191892) American poet. "November Boughs_ [1888] How dear to this heart are the scenes of my childhood, when fond recollection presents them to view! --Samuel Woodworth (17851842) American journalist, dramatist, and poet. _The Old Oaken Bucket_ Though nothing can bring back the hour Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower. --William Wordsworth (17701850) English poet. "Ode: Imitations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood", l. 177 [1807] - In the hours before dawn Sunday, accountant Tom Maguire left his wife, his kids and his tax returns at home for a street corner in South Philadelphia. As hundreds of strangers gathered, he pointed a camcorder at them, calling out: "Any memories? Any stories to tell?" The crowd had formed outside Veterans Stadium, which would be dynamited at 7 a.m. to make way for a new stadium's parking lot, and many were willing to help Mr. Maguire with his home movie. They wanted to talk about the exhilarating and exasperating Phillies and Eagles games they'd attended here, about their odd feelings of loss over the stadium's demise, and about their childhoods, when mom or dad took their little hands and walked them into this ballpark. ... People often feel a powerful bond with their home stadiums. But in recent years, many ballparks have been destroyed as cities and teams rush to build new taxpayer-financed palaces. Chicago Stadium, Boston Garden, Pittsburgh's Three Rivers Stadium, Cincinnati's Riverfront Stadium, Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium -- all are now dust. In the debris, people see lost pieces of their childhoods. ... The Vet was named to honor military veterans. It has been replaced by Lincoln Financial Field (for football) and Citizens Bank Park (for baseball). Of course, decades from now people will have built attachments to today's new stadiums as well, even with their generic corporate names. The reason: Those bonds are often more about the history you witness at the ballpark and the friends and family who witness it with you. That helps explain why thousands of fans buy bottles of infield dirt from demolished facilities for $20 a pop, or battered stadium seats for $150. A University of Pittsburgh academic building stands on the former site of Forbes Field, where Bill Mazeroski's ninth- inning homer won the World Series for the Pirates on Oct 13., 1960. Fans still make a pilgrimage to home plate, now preserved under glass in the flooring inside that building. ... As a teen in the late 1970s, I spent my summers working as a hot-dog vendor at the Vet. On Sunday, as I waited for it to implode, I sorted through my memories. I recalled how fans always addressed me ("Yo, hot dog! Over here!"), the constant smell of mustard on my skin, the pretty usherettes, the silly rhymes I'd shout to lure customers: "I've got mustard, I've got meat; if you've got money, I'll come to your seat!" My parents weren't sports fans, but they did visit the Vet a few times to proudly watch me work in the Big Leagues. Once, they took a photo of me clutching my hot-dog kettle in the Vet's upper deck, as thousands of fans ignored me. They still display it in their home. On Sunday, 2,800 explosions felled the Vet in 62 seconds. Many in the crowd were subdued. Gazing at the ruins, Peter Paoli, 45, talked about his father's last Eagles game, in 1991. His father felt well and happy. Months later, he'd be dead from cancer. "As the stadium was settling, all these memories came rushing through my head," said Mr. Paoli. "I literally saw my father here today." --Jeffrey Zaslow "It's Root, Root, Root For the Old Stadium: Saying Goodbye to Childhood Haunts" in _The Wall Street Journal_ [25 March 2004]. - - After my husband died I would go into his closet and hug his suits, because they smelled of his own body odor, slight cigarette smell, and aftershave. I'd stand there, hugging his clothes, making believe, close my eyes, and cry. --anon. in Avery N. Gilbert & Charles J. Wysocki "The Smell Results" _National Geographic_ [October 1987]. The smell of kerosene brings back for me the memories of reading by a kerosene light, the feeling of closeness and safety and the shadows cast on the walls, the laughter of a grandmother dead almost thirty years. --anon. in Avery N. Gilbert & Charles J. Wysocki "The Smell Results" _National Geographic_ [October 1987]. - This is the nineteen what, eighties? --dialogue _Cheers_ TV show, "Coach" (Nicholas Colasanto 19231985) -- Three elderly ladies were discussing the trials of getting older. One said, "Sometimes I catch myself with a jar of mayonnaise in my hand in front of the refrigerator and can't remember whether I need to put it away, or start making a sandwich." The second lady chimed in, "Yes, sometimes I find myself on the landing of the stairs and can't remember whether I was on my way up or on my way down. " The third one responded, "Well, I'm glad I don't have that problem; knock on wood," she raps her knuckles on the table, then says, "That must be the door, I'll get it." ----- confabulate (verb) [kκn-fζb-yu-leyt] To chat, converse; (psychology) to fill lapses of memory with fabrications that one believes are facts. eidetic (adj.) [I-'de-tik] Marked by or involving extraordinarily accurate and vivid recall especially of visual images. adverb: eidetically erstwhile (adj.) ['κrst-hwIl] Former, in the past; formerly. Mnemosyne (noun) In Greek mythology, the goddess personifying memory, and mother of the Muses. nostalgia (noun) A sentimental recollection: a mixed feeling of happiness, sadness, and longing when recalling a person, place, or event from the past, or the past in general. end page | MACARTHUR (DOUGLAS) - MALICE | MAN - MARINES | MARRIAGE | MARTYRS - MAUGHAM (WILLIAM SOMERSET) | McCARTHY - MEANNESS | MEDIA (THE) | MEDICINE - MEMORIAL DAY | MEMORIES - MEMORY | MEN - MEN v. WOMEN | MENTAL ILLNESS - MILK | MIND (THE) - MINDING OWN BUSINESS | MINNESOTA - MISERY | MISFORTUNE - MISSOURI | MISTAKES | MISTAKEN IDENTITY - MODESTY | MONEY | MONROE - MOON | MORAL ASSASINATION - MORALITY | MORNING - MOUNTAINS | MOVIE DIALOGUE - MUSHROOMS | MUSIC - MYTHOLOGY | | H | I - J | K - L | M | N - O | P - Q | | Return Home | The Credits | The Cast | Act 1 | Act 2 | Act 3 | The Reviews | |
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