Unhappy Memories Quotes

Childhood is less clear to me than to many people: when it ended I turned my face away from it for no reason that I know about, certainly without the usual reason of unhappy memories. For many years that worried me, but then I discovered that the tales of former children are seldom to be trusted. Some people supply too many past victories or pleasures with which to comfort themselves, and other people cling to pains, real and imagined, to excuse what they have become. ~ Lillian Hellman

Unhappy memories are persistent. They're specific, and it's the details that refuse to leave us alone. Though a happy memory may stay with you just as long as one that makes you miserable, what you remember softens over time. What you recall is simply that you were happy, not necessarily the individual moments that brought about your joy.
But the memory of something painful does just the opposite. It retains its original shape, all bony fingers and pointy elbows. Every time it returns, you get a quick poke in the eye or jab in the stomach. The memory of being unhappy has the power to hurt us long after the fact. We feel the injury anew each and every time we think of it. ~ Cameron Dokey

The secret of happiness is to enjoy the moment, without allowing unhappy memories or fear of the future to shadow the shining present. ~ Elizabeth Peters

He sometimes asked himself a question about life. Which are truer, the happy memories, or the unhappy ones? He decided, eventually, that the question was unanswerable. ~ Julian Barnes

Whatever you choose, your choice will mean there are two new worlds. And perhaps sometimes, on the edge of sleep, we will see the shadow of the other world. There will be no unhappy memories. ~ Terry Pratchett

I didn't drink in the essence of the classroom. I didn't take legible notes or dance all night. I thought I would marry my boyfriend and grow old and sick of him. I thought I would keep my friends, and we'd make different, new memories. None of that happened. Better things happened. Then why am I so sad? ~ Lena Dunham

Choice! The key is choice. You have options. You need not spend your life wallowing in failure, ignorance, grief, poverty, shame, and self-pity. But hold on! If this is true then why have so many among us apparently elected to live in this manner? The answer is obvious. Those who live in unhappy failure have never exercised their options for a better way of life because they have never been aware that had any choices ~ Og Mandino

He's dead, Annie. But as long as you haven't dealt with the memories of the things he has done to you, he'll live on. We'll always have to face these times when you think he's returned for you. You'll never be free." It ~ Lisa Unger

There is genuine joy in being alone in the dark inside your own head with no outside distractions, where you can scramble from ledge to rocky ledge, hallooing happily in a vast, echoing cave; climbing hand over hand from ledge to ledge of facts and memories, picking up old gems and new: examining, comparing, putting them down again and reaching for the next. ~ Alan Bradley

I can't read music and I'm crap at learning lyrics. Especially since the accident I have memory problems. I can't remember words, names, places. ~ Marc Almond

Where shall I keep mine? You don't put your past in your pocket; you have to have a house. I have only my body: a man entirely alone, with his lonely body, cannot indulge in memories; they pass through him. I shouldn't complain: all I wanted was to be free. ~ Jean-Paul Sartre

There are people who can do all fine and heroic things but one - keep from telling their happiness to the unhappy. ~ Mark Twain

Clothing is ... an exercise in memory. It makes me explore the past: how did I feel when I wore that. They are like signposts in the search for the past. ~ Louise Bourgeois

Memories and loneliness look backward, fear looks around, but faith always looks forward. ~ E. Lynn Harris

If people don't appreciate what you bring to the table, I think it's time you let them eat alone. Don't waste your time keeping around those who belittle you just because you're afraid to leave behind great memories. So what, you can make new memories with better people. If time has taught me anything it's that you can never let people hold you back from what you're supposed to do or need to do in order to fulfill that peace of life. ~ Lorenzo Dozier

The only reason why you are unhappy is because you are trying to be happy. ~ Jaggi Vasudev

It scares me how hard it is to remember life before you. I can't even make the comparisons anymore, because my memories of that time have all the depth of a photograph. It seems foolish to play games of better and worse. It's simply a matter of is and is no longer. ~ David Levithan

She's grabbed onto old traditions-outdated traditions- in the same way I latch onto them now: as a means of survival, as a way to hang on to ghost memories. ~ Lisa See

Middle age, my boy. No memory at all. ~ John Williams

The waiting began to take its toll. It's a terrifying place. Pressure from the past, pressure from the future. They say too much of either is a mental illness. The future brings anxiety because you don't belong and can't move forward. The past brings depression because you can't go home. Your memories fade and everything you know is gone. ~ Dina Nayeri

There can be no doubt that the chief fault we have developed, through the long course of human evolution, is a certain basic passivity. When provoked by challenges, human beings are magnificent. When life is quiet and even, we take the path of least resistance, and then wonder why we feel bored. A man who is determined and active doesn't pay much attention to 'luck'. If things go badly, he takes a deep breath and redoubles his effort. And he quickly discovers that his moments of deepest happiness often come after such efforts. The man who has become accustomed to a passive existence becomes preoccupied with 'luck'; it may become an obsession. When things go well, he is delighted and good humored; when they go badly, he becomes gloomy and petulant. He is unhappy - or dissatisfied - most of the time, for even when he has no cause for complaint, he feels that gratitude would be premature; things might go wrong at any moment; you can't really trust the world... Gambling is one basic response to this passivity, revealing the obsession with luck, the desire to make things happen.

The absurdity about this attitude is that we fail to recognize the active part we play in making life a pleasure. When my will is active, my whole mental and physical being works better, just as my digestion works better if I take exercise between meals. I gain an increasing feeling of control over my life, instead of the feeling of helplessness (what Sartre calls 'contingency') that comes from ~ Colin Wilson

Outside speech, the association that is made in the memory between words having something in common creates different groups, series, families, within which very diverse relations obtain but belonging to a single category: these are associative relations. ~ Ferdinand De Saussure

Some women enjoy unhappy love affairs, you know, though I have always felt that they are greatly overrated. ~ Ellen Glasgow

Perfume is magic. It's mystery. We recreate the smell of a flower. Of wood. Of grass. We capture the essence of life. Liquefy it. We store memories. We make dreams," he told her once. "What we do is a wonder, an art, and we have a responsibility to do it well. ~ M.J. Rose

Indeed, the greatest blessing that can follow the death of those we love is reconciliation. Without it there is no peace. But with it come quiet thoughts and quickened memories. And what else shall a man do except become reconciled? What purpose does he serve by fighting what he cannot touch or by brooding upon what he cannot change? ~ Richard L. Evans

I guard my memories of my lost one jealously, keep them securely under wraps, like a folio of delicate watercolours that must be protected from the harsh light of day. ~ John Banville

Bricks without straw are more easily made than imagination without memories. ~ Lord Dunsany

With most men, scarce a link of memory holds yesterday and to-day together. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Not to follow the dharma leads to disaster. Life will be unhappy. ~ Frederick Lenz

Oh, you have no idea how crazy I can be. Get us in or you'll wish you were dead. -Tom Sterns Chaysing Memories ~ Jalpa Williby

It had not seemed to matter that Rose was only eight years old.
"More than eight," said Rose. "Nearly nine."
"Darling Rose, even almost nearly nine-year-old's don't fall in love," said forgetful Caddy.
Caddy tried very hard to comfort Rose when Tom had left. It was not an easy job. It was like trying to comfort a small, unhappy tiger.
"Who said anything about falling in love?" growled Rose crossly. "Falling! Falling is by accident! I didn't fall in anything!"
"Oh. Right. Sorry, Posy Rose."
"And I am definitely not in love! ~ Hilary McKay

Yesterday's just a memory, tomorrow is never what it's supposed to be. ~ Bob Dylan

This kind of horror has become all too familiar to us. As parents, Cindy and I offer our prayers to the memory of the slain children and ask that God ease the pain of Littleton's suffering families, ... The students of Columbine High School and children everywhere have a basic right to learn in an environment free of fear and violence. We must redouble our efforts to see that this is a reality. ~ John McCain

All preceptors should have that kind of genius described by Tacitus, "equal to their business, but not above it;" a patient industry, with competent erudition; a mind depending more on its correctness than its originality, and on its memory rather than on its invention. ~ Charles Caleb Colton

There is much less envy of the rich by the poor than there is of the happy by the unhappy; by those who believe by those who don?t believe. ~ Dennis Prager

He past is only an unreliable memory held in the present. The future is only a projection of our present conceptions. The present itself vanishes as soon as we try to grasp it. So why bother with attempting to establish an illusion of solid ground?.. ~ Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

It's not magic. I remember because I make comparisons. Not in terms of better or worse, just different. And not all of these memories are great, but they're mine.
Which lends way to believe, that none of our lives are put together on an assembly line. We're not pre-packaged with memories or programmed with stories. We have to make our own. ~ Shane Koyczan

All those practice fights when it was just us, two children pretending to be soldiers. Or two soldiers pretending to be children. ~ Sara Raasch

That's the paradox: the only time most people feel alive is when they're suffering, when something overwhelms their ordinary, careful armour, and the naked child is flung out onto the world. That's why the things that are worst to undergo are best to remember. But when that child gets buried away under their adaptive and protective shells - he becomes one of the walking dead, a monster. ~ Ted Hughes

The thing about a story is that you dream it as you tell it, hoping that others might then dream along with you, and in this way memory and imagination and language combine to make spirits in the head. There is the illusion of aliveness. ~ Tim O'Brien

I'd rather reminisce about old memories I had with true people than record the moments I have with fake people ~ Nathanael Kanyinga

You will have significant experiences. I hope that you will write them down and keep record of them, that you will read them from time to time and refresh your memory of those meaningful and significant things. Some may be funny. Some may be significant only to you. Some of them may be sacred and quietly beautiful. Some may build one upon another until they represent a lifetime of special experiences. ~ Gordon B. Hinckley

Compassion is a call, a demand of nature, to relieve the unhappy as hunger is a natural call for food. ~ Joseph Butler

She had begun to bake to have her eyes looking at a bowl, a flour bin, an oven, a fire, a face, anything but water. Her hands shaped loaves like scallop shells, like moon shells, like starfish; she ate them as if she ate the sea, to make it part of her, to transform bone to shell and lose herself in it, eyeless, thoughtless, wrapped in memories and anchored on some hoary rock against the currents of the deep. ~ Patricia A. McKillip

If I have done any deed worthy of remembrance, that deed will be my monument. If not, no monument can preserve my memory. ~ Agesilaus II