Reminiscence Quotes

How embarrassing that she ever did something that silly. But, good God, she was seventeen. At that age, we're mostly high-pitched and crazy. All urgent chemicals raging around the blood course. And that's why we do dangerous and embarrassing things, as if simultaneously we're immortal and going to die tomorrow. And that's why we look back on that time so fondly from the dimmer years to come. Remembering the days when we were like Greek gods. Mighty and idiotic.

Charles Frazier

If I had known how much I would miss these sensations I might have experienced them differently, recognized their shabby glamour, respected the ticking clock that defined this entire experience. I would have put aside my resentment, dropped my defenses. I might have a basic understanding of European history or economics. More abstractly, I might feel I had truly been somewhere, open and porous and hungry to learn. Because being a student was an enviable identity and one I can only reclaim by attending community college late in life for a bookmaking class or something.

Lena Dunham

He stood with his two frail hands on his cane and his eyes closed, and breathed in deeply the scent of the past. "Sometimes," he sighed, "I think the things I remember are more real than the things I see.

Arthur Golden

Everyone likes to reminisce, but not one wants to listen, and everyone feels annoyed when someone else tells a story.

Liu Cixin

And though I came to forget or regret all I have ever done, yet I would remember that once I saw the dragons aloft on the wind at sunset above the western isles; and I would be content.

Ursula K Le Guin

If I could go back would I do it differently? Well, I can't go back.

David Mamet

To want to tackle everything rationally is irrational.

Ilyas Kassam

‎She was not a little girl heart-broken about him; she was a grown woman smiling at it all, but they were wet smiles.

J.M. Barrie

That was our first home. Before I felt like an island in an ocean, before Calcutta, before everything that followed. You know it wasn’t a home at first but just a shell. Nothing ostentatious but just a rented two-room affair, an unneeded corridor that ran alongside them, second hand cane furniture, cheap crockery, two leaking faucets, a dysfunctional doorbell, and a flight of stairs that led to, but ended just before the roof (one of the many idiosyncrasies of the house), secured by a sixteen garrison lock, and a balcony into which a mango tree’s branch had strayed. The house was in a building at least a hundred years old and looked out on a street and a tenement block across it. The colony, if you were to call it a colony, had no name. The house itself was seedy, decrepit, as though a safe-keeper of secrets and scandals. It had many entries and exits and it was possible to get lost in it. And in a particularly inspired stroke of whimsy architectural genius, it was almost invisible from the main road like H.G. Wells’ ‘Magic Shop’. As a result, we had great difficulty when we had to explain our address to people back home. It went somewhat like this, ‘... take the second one from the main road….and then right after turning left from Dhakeshwari, you will see a bird shop (unspecific like that, for it had no name either)… walk straight in and take the stairs at the end to go to the first floor, that’s where we dwell… but don’t press the bell, knock… and don't walk too close to the cages unless you want bird-hickeys…’’('Left from Dhakeshwari')

Kunal Sen

The fifties are a peaceful time, a quiet sleeping time between two noisy bursts of years, a blue and white time filled with sweet yellow days, music and bright smelling memories.

David Gerrold

I'll never miss a chance to remind you of what a brat you were. A gloriously beautiful and very spoiled brat. I was utterly charmed by your complete self-absorption. It was rather like courting a cat.

Robin Hobb

There were so many of these moments that could never be captured accurately, even in the camcorder, only in the heart.

Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

In going back we must take our present selves with us: the mind has taken a different colour, and this is thrown back upon our past.

William Henry Hudson

Ah God! to see the branches stirtAcross the moon at Grantchester!tTo smell the thrilling-sweet and rottentUnforgettable, unforgottentRiver-smell, and hear the breezet Sobbing in the little trees.tSay, do the elm-clumps greatly standtStill guardians of that holy land?tThe chestnuts shade, in reverend dream,tThe yet unacademic streamIs dawn a secret shy and coldtAnadyomene, silver-gold?tAnd sunset still a golden seatFrom Haslingfield to Madingley?tAnd after, ere the night is born,Do hares come out about the corn?tOh, is the water sweet and cool,tGentle and brown, above the pool?tAnd laughs the immortal river stilltUnder the mill, under the mill?Say, is there Beauty yet to find?tAnd Certainty? and Quiet kind?tDeep meadows yet, for to forgettThe lies, and truths, and pain?… oh! yettStands the Church clock at ten to three?tAnd is there honey still for tea?

Rupert Brooke

I am hopelessly in love with a memory. An echo from another time, another place.

Michel Foucault

But I remember the place with fondness ... not perfect but, all in all, not a bad memory.

Diane Meier

... so in that moment all the flowers in our garden and in M. Swann's park, and the water-lilies on the Vivonne and the good folk of the village and their little dwellings and the parish church and the whole of Combray and of its surroundings, taking their proper shapes and growing solid, sprang into being, town and gardens alike, from my cup of tea.

Marcel Proust

But since the facts which I should then have recalled would have been prompted only by an exercise of the will, by my intellectual memory, and since the pictures which that kind of memory shews us of the past preserve nothing of the past itself, I should never have had any wish to ponder over this residue of Combray.

Marcel Proust

Will it ultimately reach the clear surface of my consciousness, this memory, this old, dead moment which the magnetism of an identical moment has travelled so far to importune, to disturb, to raise up out of the very depths of my being? I cannot tell. Now that I feel nothing, it has stopped, has perhaps gone down again into its darkness, from which who can say whether it will ever rise?

Marcel Proust

And so it is with our own past. It is a labour in vain to recapture it: all the efforts of our intellect must prove futile. The past is hidden somewhere outside the realm, beyond the reach of intellect, in some material object (in the sensation which that material object will give us) which we do not suspect. And as for that object, it depends on chance whether we come upon it or not before we ourselves must die.

Marcel Proust

I'm rambling again. Wandering off the point. But this is the true story of my wasted life...

Mordecai Richler

We are what we remember. If we lose our memory, we lose our identity and our identity is the accumulation of our experiences. When we walk down the memory lane, it can be unconsciously, willingly, selectively, impetuously or sometimes grudgingly. By following our stream of consciousness we look for lost time and things past. Some reminiscences become anchor points that can take another scope with the wisdom of hindsight. ("Walking down the memory lane" )

Erik Pevernagie

There are events in one's life which, no matter how remote, never fade from memory

Jim Corbett

We came from some place and we are trending in a particular direction. Without memories, we do not know where we come from, and we cannot project our future trajectory. Without a keen awareness of our history, we cannot pose any meaningful hypothesis or engage in any useful speculation regarding the future of humankind. Without knowing where humankind came from and failing to contemplate where humankind is going, we could never touch upon a comprehensive understanding of the mythology and mystery of human nature. Such a spectacle would preclude us from comprehending what it truly means to be human. Melodious memories assist us to feel in our bones what being actually entails in its full aesthetic splendor.

Kilroy J. Oldster

Human beings are self-motivated. The two desires that spur human action are hunger and love. Without memory, humankind would no longer hunger for love.

Kilroy J. Oldster

There can be no intellectual, spiritual, or emotional life without the substratum of memory. Without cognition and awareness of beauty and appreciation of our limited time on planet Earth, humankind’s sojourn would be a colorless collage composed of the base acts of a biological mass endeavoring merely to survive. Without the ability to recall striking memories, our emotional life would be stillborn. Absent authentic memories, our life struggles would seem purposeless: human beings would exhibit no capacity to reflect awe when witnessing the bounty of nature’s plenitude or be able to take in and express intense reverence for all that is sacred. Without memory, there would not be a dais to support faith or any ability to imagine a God; the concepts of good and evil would be nonexistent; and the past and the future would become less relevant than the choice between salt or pepper, and paper or plastic.

Kilroy J. Oldster

No person is more ruthlessly cheated than someone strip-mined of his or her ability to recall the vibrancy of the past. After all, what would any person be if robbed of all sense of long-term memory? Without memories, all that any person would know about life is if he or she was hungry or thirsty, cold or hot. Without memories of the past and shredded of any illusion of a future there cannot be a frame for our existence. Without a sense of memory, we lack cognition of the very essence of our being. In absence of our memories, there can be no introspection, no ethical awareness, and no devotion, loyalty, or love.

Kilroy J. Oldster

The young have aspirations that never come to pass, the old have reminiscences of what never happened.

Saki

Its really hard to recall the day you became friends with special people.

Michael Bassey Johnson

Imagination and recollection of cherished memories of the pastimes are closely related. We do not recall memories verbatim. As our perspective changes regarding our place in the world, we shift through our recollections and revise our memories. People possess the ability to edit their memories by repressing unbearable episodes and highlighting incidences that generate fond memories. How we perceive and comprehend ourselves in the past, the present, and the future shapes our evolving sense of self. Humankind’s ability to repress unpleasant events and humankind’s ability to act as the solo editors of our germinating awareness of the world that we occupy is ultimately responsible for activating our metamorphosing sense of identity.

Kilroy J. Oldster

The Old Days, the Lost Days -- in the half-closed eyes of memory (and in fact) they never marched across a calendar; they huddled round a burning log, leaned on a certain table, or listened to those certain songs.

Beryl Markham

Back then, come July, and the blazers would again make their way out of the steel trunks and evenings would be spent looking at snow-capped mountains from our terrace and spotting the first few lights on the hills above. It was the time for radishes and mulberries in the garden and violets on the slopes. The wind carried with it the comforting fragrance of eucalyptus. It was in fact all about the fragrances, like you know, in a Sherlock Holmes story. Even if you walked with your eyes closed, you could tell at a whiff, when you had arrived at the place, deduce it just by its scent. So, the oranges denoted the start of the fruit-bazaar near Prakash ji’s book shop, and the smell of freshly baked plum cake meant you had arrived opposite Air Force school and the burnt lingering aroma of coffee connoted Mayfair. But when they carved a new state out of the land and Dehra was made its capital, we watched besotted as that little town sprouted new buildings, high-rise apartments, restaurant chains, shopping malls and traffic jams, and eventually it spilled over here. I can’t help noticing now that the fragrances have changed; the Mogra is tinged with a hint of smoke and will be on the market tomorrow. The Church has remained and so has everything old that was cast in brick and stone, but they seem so much more alien that I almost wish they had been ruined.’('Left from Dhakeshwari')

Kunal Sen

Sometimes, I miss so much the person that I was before the world tore me up in so many places. If only "they" could have just let me stay that way.

C. JoyBell C.

The cloudless day is richer at its close;A golden glory settles on the lea;Soft, stealing shadows hint of cool reposeTo mellowing landscape, and to calming sea.And in that nobler, gentler, lovelier light,The soul to sweeter, loftier bliss inclines;Freed form the noonday glare, the favour’d sightIncreasing grace in earth and sky divines.But ere the purest radiance crowns the green,Or fairest lustre fills th’ expectant grove,The twilight thickens, and the fleeting sceneLeaves but a hallow’d memory of love!

H.P. Lovecraft

Keeping busy is the hardest part. When I find myself still, clear of thoughts, I can still feel you holding me.

Karen Quan

When I go out by the gateway, taking the road I drove along that first time I picked up Lotte for the ball, how very different it all is! It is all over, all of it! There is not a hint of the world that once was, not one bulse-beat of those past emotions. I feel like a ghost returning to the burnt-out ruins of the castle he built in his prime as a prince, which he adorned with magnificent splendours and then, on his deathbed, but full of hope, left to his beloved son

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

That's the beauty and the curse of the 'engrafted word'... it all comes down to interpretation.

Amy Marie

I have learned that if you must leave a place that you have lived in and loved and where all your yesteryears are buried deep, leave it any way except a slow way, leave it the fastest way you can. Never turn back and never believe that an hour you remember is a better hour because it is dead. Passed years seem safe ones, vanquished ones, while the future lives in a cloud, formidable from a distance.

Beryl Markham

The living owe it to those who no longer can speak to tell their story for them.

Czesław Miłosz

I see that you are heartlessly clever.For you know how to Love,but not Forever. You still return to me in flashes,so strong it clouds my Mind.The fire has turned to ashes,and yet, you’re not behind.

Meraaqi

Leave old pains alone. When they cease coming to call, do not invite them back.

Robin Hobb

She tried to remember all the times she had spoken to him. She replayed every moment she could remember at the beach last week. Not once had she led him to believe that she liked him improperly. And yet, last night, he had appeared as if she had invited him. She had given herself so willingly, so lasciviously, that he must have thought she had desired him all along. Perhaps she had, or perhaps she had not realised how pleasurable intimacy could be.

Mahita Vas

Perhaps the echoes of people we once loved still linger in the places we frequented with them and that is why we go back… Not so much to remember them as to feel them…

Ranata Suzuki

I still think of you every day.But I’m trying not to let it hurt me with the same intensity that it used to.

Ranata Suzuki

I had always wanted to hear those words.I had always wanted to be your girl.

Ranata Suzuki

For you are you, and I am I, and once we were we… but as long as I exist and so do you – know that I will always love you.

Ranata Suzuki

You can miss places. You can miss people.Just know that what you’re really missing is the way things were. And even if you could go there again…. see them again…. you can’t go back.They’re not the same.You’re not the same.The loss of them changed you.

Ranata Suzuki

If you’re searching for a quote that puts your feelings into words – you won’t find it.You can learn every language and read every word ever written – but you’ll never find what’s in your heart.How can you?He has it.

Ranata Suzuki

It hurts that I was just one page in the book of your life…But what hurts more is knowing you’ll revise that chapter someday….….. and you’ll erase me completely.

Ranata Suzuki

I try to do something positive – I socialise more…But deep down I know the truth.An entire world of people can never replace the one that I’ve lost.

Ranata Suzuki

Though I never really had you….… to me you will always be the one that got away.

Ranata Suzuki

You’re everything to me. But at best, I’m just a memory to you.

Ranata Suzuki

A kiss….….. is just a kiss….Until it’s all you reminisce.(Then the memory becomes your most treasured possession.)

Ranata Suzuki

I know he wasn’t perfect…But he did the best impression of it I’ve ever seen.

Ranata Suzuki

When I was with him suddenly I wasn’t this broken person anymore.I was just me.I was whole again.I was just a person – like everyone else.

Ranata Suzuki

With you in my life I felt like I could conquer anything.It was as if I was on top of the world and even the stars themselves were just within my grasp.But without you …. even getting through the day is hard.

Ranata Suzuki

I need to stop running back to you in my mind all the time.

Ranata Suzuki

Every quote, every book, every film seemed to suggest that ‘one day’ someone would come into my life and love me with an intensity and a passion I had never experienced before. And to their credit they were right; It all came and went so fast it really did feel as if it were just ‘one day’....

Ranata Suzuki

He looked at me like I was the stars when all I’d ever felt like was the dark nothingness between them.

Ranata Suzuki

It’s the intricate details you miss the most. For me, it’s the soft lines around the eyes when he smiles… Or that look he gave me sometimes that I cannot begin to describe - but I would know it if I saw it again.It was the look that gave him away.I’d know that look anywhere…It used to be my everything.

Ranata Suzuki

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Reminiscence Quotes

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