Forgetting Past Quotes

South Africans must recall the terrible past so that we can deal with it, forgiving where forgiveness is necessary but never forgetting. ~ Nelson Mandela

There is much I am happy to forget ~ Veronica Roth

When something is Festering on your memory or in your imagination, laws of silence don't work, it's just like shutting a door and locking it on a house on fire in hope of forgetting that the house is burning. But not facing a fire doesn't put it out. Silence about a thing just magnifies it. It grows and festers in silence, becomes malignant... ~ Tennessee Williams

A mismatched outfit, a slightly defective denture, an exquisite mediocrity of the soul-those are the details that make a woman real, alive. The women you see on posters or in fashion magazines-the ones all the women try to imitate nowadays-how can they be attractive? They have no reality of their own; they're just the sum of a set of abstract rules. They aren't born of human bodies; they hatch ready-made from the computers." ~The Book of Laughter and Forgetting ~ Milan Kundera

Because in a way it happened to someone else. I don't really speak that person's language anymore, and when I think about her, she embarrasses me sometimes, but I don't want to forget her, I don't want to pretend she never existed. So before I start forgetting, I have to get down exactly who she was, and exactly how she felt about everything. She was me a lot longer than I've been me so far. ~ Peter S. Beagle

I was not taking [my prescription] quite as often as I was technically supposed to. Partly, I kept forgetting, but also there was something else I couldn't quite identify, some way-down fear that taking a pill to become myself was wrong. ~ John Green

Memory is the art of forgetting. ~ Laszlo Krasznahorkai

You were very hurt at being slighted. That means you are forgetting too easily who you are. ~ Josemaria Escriva

To My Children,
I'm dedicating my little story to you; doubtless you will be among the very few who will ever read it. It seems war stories aren't very well received at this point. I'm told they're out-dated, untimely and as might be expected - make some unpleasant reading. And, as you have no doubt already perceived, human beings don't like to remember unpleasant things. They gird themselves with the armor of wishful thinking, protect themselves with a shield of impenetrable optimism, and, with a few exceptions, seem to accomplish their "forgetting" quite admirably.
But you, my children, I don't want you to be among those who choose to forget. I want you to read my stories and a lot of others like them. I want you to fill your heads with Remarque and Tolstoy and Ernie Pyle. I want you to know what shrapnel, and "88's" and mortar shells and mustard gas mean. I want you to feel, no matter how vicariously, a semblance of the feeling of a torn limb, a burnt patch of flesh, the crippling, numbing sensation of fear, the hopeless emptiness of fatigue. All these things are complimentary to the province of War and they should be taught and demonstrated in classrooms along with the more heroic aspects of uniforms, and flags, and honor and patriotism. I have no idea what your generation will be like. In mine we were to enjoy "Peace in our time". A very well meaning gentleman waved his umbrella and shouted those very words...less than a year before the whole world went to war. ~ Rod Serling

There's nothing better than going to the movies and going into another world, and forgetting about everything that's happening outside. ~ Warwick Davis

I felt emotions of gentleness and pleasure, that had long appeared dead, revive within me. Half surprised by the novelty of these sensations, I allowed myself to be borne away by them, and forgetting my solitude and deformity, dared to be happy. ~ Mary Shelley

Honestly, I don't care what we do. I just want to stay wrapped around him for as long as possible, fighting sleep and forgetting about the rest of the world. ~ Karen M. McManus

We depend on our surroundings obliquely to embody the moods and ideas we respect and then to remind us of them. We look to our buildings to hold us, like a kind of psychological mould, to a helpful vision of ourselves. We arrange around us material forms which communicate to us what we need - but are at constant risk of forgetting what we need - within. We turn to wallpaper, benches, paintings and streets to staunch the disappearance of our true selves. ~ Alain De Botton

...first, in order to remember, something must be forgotten; second, the place where memories are stored has no boundaries. In other words, forgetting is a twin; its tandem effect is best called "simultancous" distraction, the instant when one memory defoliates another. This fuzzy double - one devouring the other - presumably inhibits learning ~ Norman Klein

Seduction like attraction, is spoken about in a more positive manner in our generation. Forgetting the fact that these attributes involve bending the will of another person in order to make our ends meet our means. ~ Mwanandeke Kindembo

Swifts, on a fine morning in May, flying this way, that way, sailing around at a great hight, perfectly happily. Then, one leaps onto the back of another, grasps tightly and forgetting to fly they both sink down and down, in a great dying fall, fathom after fathom, until the female utters a loud, piercing cry of ecstasy. ~ Charlotte Bronte

We in the Hispanic community are truly tired of both the Democrats and the Republicans promising all of these things during the campaigns and then forgetting about it after the campaigns are over. ~ Jorge Ramos

come with me?' the doctor asked. 'I'd like to stay,' Troy said. He felt a bizarre calmness. All the pain had been ripped away. This was more forceful than forgetting. He remembered everything. His soul had been cut free. ~ Hugh Howey

Matter is energy plus information. You and I, our bodies are matter. Our minds depend on that. There is no part of mind that is not the flux of information and energy at the classical level. At the classical level matter of a certain density may not share space with other matter. You and I cannot cross over. But at the quantum level, all things may pass through each other. But passing through causes a change in states, a change of information. Every change brings loss, creates anomalies. Losses pile up. Anomalies grow. Forgetting occurs. Without the information being isolated from the process, how can what was be made to the same pattern? It is similar, but it is not the same. New organization is possible, but old patterns are gone forever. The longer you stay at quantum level, interacting with lower levels of organization, the more you lose. Perhaps it's better. ~ Justina Robson

We've met before - a thousand times. I am the girl the world forgets. It started when I was sixteen years old. A slow declining, an isolation, one piece at a time. A father forgetting to drive me to school. A mother setting the table for three, not four. A teacher who forgets to chase my missing homework. A friend who looks straight through me and sees a stranger. No matter what I do, the words I say, the people I hurt, the crimes I commit - you will never remember who I am. That makes my life tricky. It also makes me dangerous... ~ Claire North

I keep forgetting to get glasses. It makes my husband crazy. I ask my most stylish friend to come with me to pick them out. The salesman wants me to buy bright blue ones. Fashion forward, he calls them. My friend laughs. "I don't think they go with the way you dress." How do I dress? I wonder. Like a bus driver is the answer ...
I get glasses that are a little bit fashion backward. ~ Jenny Offill

Gradually, at the concerts, I began to hear calls for 'the fat girl' ... Then I would jump up for the piano stool, forgetting about my size [145 lbs at age 13], and work to get all the laughs I could get. ~ Sophie Tucker

She trusted him.
She had faith in him.
And he left her forever.
Something tells me she's not forgetting that anytime soon. ~ Lisa Schroeder

The sadness inherent in any memory comes from the fact that its object is forgetting. ~ Cesar Aira

What I mean is, if we aren't learning, we are forgetting, if we aren't getting smart, we are becoming dull. The latest statistic is that the average American watches 1,456 hours of television a year but only reads three books. So if it's true that readers are leaders, and the more you read the further you advance, then there isn't a lot of competition. ~ Donald Miller

Surfacing

When you go to the water seeking answers
You won't find me there.
Just Remember:
I am in the sun and the clouds
The Trees and the wind.
Your very own shadow.

When you let the tears come down
With the fear of forgetting,
Just Remember:
I am in your laughter and quiet times
The hellos and goodbyes.
Your very own spirit.

When you continue living tomorrow
After years of grieving,
Just remember:
I am in your memories and yesterdays
The good times and closed chapters.
It's time to go on. ~ Lucy Lennox

Her phone beeps and she pulls it out again. She frowns.

I give her a side-eye. "Everything all right?"

She scrolls through her email.

"Earth to Gail?"

Nothing.

"Gail Morgan O'Sullivan."

"What? Oh!" She shoves her phone into her back pocket. "Sorry, sorry. Do you ever feel like you're forgetting something?"

"My underwear. All the time," I say with dead seriousness. "Sometimes I give myself a wedgie just to make sure I have them on. ~ Ashley Poston

Forgetting your Self is the greatest injury; all the calamities flow from it. Take care of the most important, the lesser will take care of itself. You do not tidy up a dark room. You open the windows first. Letting in the light makes everything easy. So, let us wait with improving others until we see ourselves as we are/ and have changed. There is no need to turn round and round in endless questioning; find yourself and everything will fall into its proper place. ~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Our sense of worth, of well-being, even our sanity depends upon our remembering. But, alas, our sense of worth, our well-being, our sanity also depend upon our forgetting. ~ Joyce Appleby

There is no enough.' Tarin flicked her indicator on, the clicking noise filling the car as she merged on to the motorway. 'You seem to be forgetting that she's in a clinical facility getting professional help. Which is great, obviously. Let them worry about how to deal with depression. You're going to visit your friend, remember? Yes, she's a patient, but she's not your patient. So for God's sake, don't treat her like one. ~ Sara Barnard

Failure to deal with the presence of sin can often be traced back to spiritual amnesia – forgetting our new, true, real identity. As a believer, I am someone who has been delivered from the dominion of sin and who therefore is free and motivated to fight against the remnants of sin in my heart. You must know, rest in, think through, and act upon your new identity – you are in Christ ~ Sinclair B. Ferguson

By God and upon my conscience", said the devil, "I never observed it, for my mind is occupied with so many different things that I was forgetting the main thing I came about." "This demon must be an honest fellow and a good Christian," said Sancho; "for if he wasn't he wouldn't swear by God and his conscience; I feel sure now there must be good souls even in hell itself. ~ Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

Went on, taking first one side and then the other, and making quite a conversation of it altogether; but after a few minutes she heard a voice outside, and stopped to listen. 'Mary Ann! Mary Ann!' said the voice. 'Fetch me my gloves this moment!' Then came a little pattering of feet on the stairs. Alice knew it was the Rabbit coming to look for her, and she trembled till she shook the house, quite forgetting that she was now about a thousand times as large as the Rabbit, and had ~ Lewis Carroll

Momentarily forgetting this wasn't one of her She-wolves, Sissy automatically teased, "Good thing
my brother likes women with meat on their bones 'cause your ass is gonna be gettin' wide."
As soon as the words left her mouth, she wished she could take them back.
But without missing a beat, Jessie shot back, "Cool. Now I can start wearing your jeans. I thought
that was only going to be possible during the late stages of the pregnancy. ~ Shelly Laurenston

How many there are ... who imagine that because Jesus paid it all, they need pay nothing, forgetting that the prime object of their salvation was that they should follow in the footsteps of Jesus Christ in bringing back a lost world to God. ~ Lottie Moon

My anger is Sandra's Scotch. It is her wine, her sleeping pills, her years of speed and 'mandies make you randy', her denial, her forgetting. These are the ways we numb the pain of vulnerability, but emotion cannot be selectively numbed. If we are too good at it for too long we will numb our ability to form true connections, with ourselves and with others, which is the only thing we are here for--if we are here, glued to the same crumb busily suspended in infinity, for anything at all. ~ Sarah Krasnostein

I was thinking of Anna. I make myself think of her, I do it as an exercise. She is lodged in me like a knife and yet I am beginning to forget her. Already the image of her that I hold in my head is fraying, bits of pigments, flakes of gold leaf, are chipping off. Will the entire canvas be empty one day? I have come to realise how little I knew her, I mean how shallowly I knew her, how ineptly. I do not blame myself for this. Perhaps I should. Was I too lazy, too inattentive, too self-absorbed? Yes, all of those things, and yet I cannot think it is a matter of blame, this forgetting, this not-having-known. I fancy, rather, that I expected too much, in the way of knowing. I know so little of myself, how should I think to know another? ~ John Banville

Her memory like a skipping record, bumping continually up against the scratch. ~ Kristen Roupenian

Really, Emmanuel,' said Julie, 'wouldn't you think that all these rich people, so happy only a short while ago, had built their fortunes, their happiness and their social position, while forgetting to allow for the wicked genie; and that this genie, like the wicked fairy in Perrault's stories1 who is not invited to some wedding or christening, had suddenly appeared to take revenge for that fatal omission? ~ Alexandre Dumas

When GOD opens a door and it looks dark on the inside. Don't fret. You are forgetting one thing: you are light and only when you go in does it light up. ~ TemitOpe Ibrahim

What I love about watching classic horror films is that they take you on a ride and they obviously make you scared because you're so invested in the characters, you're almost forgetting that oh my God, this is about to scare me. ~ Katie Holmes

You think the only thing you can do is leave, but that won't help you. You're forgetting something very important. Actually, you're forgetting two very important things." He paused. "Come to think of it, you're probably forgetting a lot, because you got your head knocked - ~ Jennifer L. Armentrout

I needed, I decided, to really know her, because I needed more to remember. Before I could begin the shameful process of forgetting the how and the why of her living and dying, I needed to learn it: How. Why. When. Where. What. ~ John Green

Dickens writes that an event, began to be forgotten, as most affairs are, when wonder, having no fresh food to support it, dies away of itself. ~ Charles Dickens

Forgetting was not the same as healing. ~ Rivers Solomon