Quotes & Sayings About Forgetfulness

Love is the key. Joy is love singing. Peace is love resting. Patience is love enduring. Kindness is love's truth. Goodness is love's character. Faithfulness is love's habit. Gentleness is love's self-forgetfulness. Self-control is being the reins — Donald Grey Barnhouse

And still the mad magnificent herald Spring assembles beauty from forgetfulness with the wild trump of April:witchery of sound and odour drives the wingless thing man forth in the bright air ... — E. E. Cummings

Rest assured it is harder to know how to be full than it is to know how to be hungry-so desperate is the tendency of human nature to pride and forgetfulness of God. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Let us not complain against men because otheir rudeness, their ingratitude, their injustice, their arrogance, their love oself, their forgetfulness oothers. They are so made. Such is their nature. — Jean De La Bruyere

Yet when, one day, standing on the outskirts of Yokohama town, bristling with its display of modern miscellanies, I watched the sunset in your southern sea, and saw its peace and majesty among your pine-clad hills, - with the great Fujiyama growing faint against the golden horizon, like a god overcome with his own radiance, - the music of eternity welled up through the evening silence, and I felt that the sky and the earth and the lyrics of the dawn and the dayfall are with the poets and idealists, and not with the marketmen robustly contemptuous of all sentiment, - that, after the forgetfulness of his own divinity, man will remember again that heaven is always in touch with his world, which can never be abandoned for good to the hounding wolves of the modern era, scenting human blood and howling to the skies. — Rabindranath Tagore

The long-term accommodation that protects marriage and other such relationships is ... forgetfulness. — Alice Walker

The leaves of our blessed lives fall to the ground and if we're wise like my grandfather, we gather them in a pile and keep them safe lest the winds of forgetfulness blow them away. — Philip Gulley

A woman is more responsive to a man's forgetfulness than to his attentions. — Jules Janin

May we awaken from forgetfulness and realize our true home. — Nhat Hanh

Why, when the world gets to understand about it I expect that two men or two women, or a man and a woman, will come in here, and say to me, 'We have quarrelled and outraged each other, we have injured our friend, our wife, our husband; we regret, we would forgive, but we cannot, because we remember. Put between us the atonement of forgetfulness, that we may love each other as of old. — Edward Bellamy

We trust death to spare us the infirmities of age or the pain of an illness or an injury that is past healing. We trust death to comfort us with forgetfulness of life's sorrows. We trusted that death was a passageway fro life to life. — Catherine M. Wilson

The poor young man must work for his bread; he eats; when he has eaten, he has nothing left but reverie. He enters God's theater free; he sees the sky, space, the stars, the flowers, the children, the humanity in which he suffers, the creation in which he shines. He looks at humanity so much that he sees the soul, he looks at creation so much that he sees God. He dreams, he feels that he is great; he dreams some more, and he feels that he is tender. From the egotism of the suffering man, he passes to the compassion of the contemplating man. A wonderful feeling springs up within him, forgetfulness of self, and pity for all. In thinking of the countless enjoyments nature offers, gives, and gives lavishly to open souls and refuses to closed souls, he, a millionaire of intelligence, comes to grieve for the millionaires of money. All hatred leaves his heart as all light enters his mind. And is he unhappy? No. The poverty of a young man is never miserable. — Victor Hugo

Because of our forgetfulness, God has created the physical world to be mnemonic, to help us daily remember that we are not alone, that we are not at the center, that life is not primarily about us, and that there is a grander story than the little stories of our individual lives. Physical things are meant to remind us of the grandeur and glory of the One who created all those things, set them in motion, and keeps them together by the awesome power of his will. — Paul David Tripp

Altitude reduces all things to their relative proportions, and to the truth. Cares, remorse, disgust become strangers: How easily indifference, contempt, forgetfulness drop away ... and forgiveness descends. — Julian Barnes

Why did you leave? Am I not good enough? Where did you go? When did it happen? ..Who are you? — Ade Santi

If e'er I win a parting token,
'Tis something that has lost its power
A chain that has been used and broken,
A ruin'd glove, a faded flower;
Something that makes my pleasure less,
Something that means
forgetfulness. — Nathaniel Parker Willis

Go ahead and eat your bread, a time will come when it shall get to you breath. Go ahead and leave your pen, exams will come when you shall remember the pen! — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Look around you and look at yourself: the world is swarming with assassins, that is, people who allow themselves to forget those they claimed to love. To forget someone: have you really thought about what that means? Forgetfulness is a gigantic ocean where only one ship sails, the ship of memory. For most human beings, that ship is no more than a miserable tub which takes on water at the slightest opportunity. — Amelie Nothomb

Many of the ugly pages of American history have been obscured and forgotten. A society is always eager to cover misdeeds with a cloak of forgetfulness, but no society can fully repress an ugly past when the ravages persist into the present. America owes a debt of justice which it has only begun to pay. If it loses the will to finish or slackens in its determination, history will recall its crimes and the country that would be great will lack the most indispensable element of greatness - justice. — Martin Luther

O sleep, O gentle sleep, Nature's soft nurse, how have I frightened thee, 1710. That thou no more will weigh my eyelids down, And steep my senses in forgetfulness? — William Shakespeare

I do not want to recollect. I should be afraid of preventing the future and of allowing the past to encroach on me. It is out of the utter forgetfulness of yesterday that I create every new hour's freshness. It is never enough for me to have been happy. I do not believe in dead things and cannot distinguish between being no more and never having been. — Andre Gide

Your soul has a special mission. Your soul is supremely conscious of it.
Maya, illusion or forgetfulness, makes you feel that you are finite, weak and helpless. This is not true. You are not the body. You are not the senses. You are not the mind. These are all limited. You are the soul, which is unlimited. Your soul is infinitely powerful. Your soul defies all time and space. — Sri Chinmoy

There they lay, but not in the forgetfulness of the previous night. She was seeking and he was seeking, they raged and contorted their faces and bored their heads into each others bosom in the urgency of seeking something, and their embraces and their tossing limbs did not avail to make them forget, but only reminded them of what they sought — Franz Kafka

This is gospel-humility, blessed self-forgetfulness. Not thinking less of myself as in modern cultures, or less of myself as in traditional cultures. Simply thinking of myself less. — Timothy Keller

Forget thyself to marble. — John Milton

So it ends as I guessed it would,' his thoughts said, even as it fluttered away; and it laughed a little within him ere it fled, almost gay it seemed to be casting off all doubt and care and fear. And even as it winged away into forgetfulness it heard voices, and they seemed to be crying in some forgotten world far above:
'The eagles are coming! The eagles are coming!'
For one moment more Pippin's thought hovered. Bilbo! But no! That came in his tale, long long ago. This is my tale, and it ended now. Good-bye!' And his thought fled far away and his eyes saw no more. — J.R.R. Tolkien

How odd to smile during Richard's funeral. He was dead and I was smiling to myself. Grief does that. Laughter lies close in with despair, numbness near by acuity and memory with forgetfulness. I would have got used to it, but I didn't know this at the time. All I knew, was that memory had given pleasure first, then cracking pain. — Kay Redfield Jamison

Even Annie did not then know that it was the soul's hunger, the vague sense of a need which nothing but the God of human faces, the God of the morning and of the starful night, the God of love and self-forgetfulness, can satisfy, that sent her money-loving, poverty-stricken, pining, grumbling old aunt out staring towards the east. It is this formless idea of something at hand that keeps men and women striving to tear from the bosom of the world the secret of their own hopes. How little they know what they look for in reality is their God! This is that for which their heart and their flesh cry out. — George MacDonald

Through memory we travel against time, through forgetfulness we follow its course. — Joseph Joubert

Our time has been distinguished, more than by anything else, by a mastery, a control, of the external world, and by an almost total forgetfulness of the internal world. If one estimates human evolution from the point of view of knowledge of the external world, then we are in many respects progressing. If our estimate is from the point of view of the internal world, and of oneness of internal and external, then the judgment must be very different. — R.D. Laing

Wherever God may keep you at any time, from there itself must you undertake the pilgrimage to God-realization. In all forms, in action and non-action is He, the One Himself. While attending to your work with your hands, keep yourself bound to Him by sustaining japa, the constant remembrance of Him in your heart and mind. In God's empire, it is forgetfulness of Him that is detrimental. The way to Peace lies in the remembrance of Him and of Him alone. — Anandamayi Ma

Humility is the forgetfulness of self. — Thomas Keating

We live in a society of an imposed forgetfulness, a society that depends on public amnesia. — Angela Davis

Forgetfulness is a form of freedom. — Kahlil Gibran

He sought not to efface sorrow by forgetfulness, but to magnify and dignify it by hope. He said: - Have a care of the manner in which you turn towards the dead. Think not of that which perishes. Gaze steadily. You will perceive the living light of your well-beloved dead in the depths of heaven. — Victor Hugo

Being alone will show you who you really are, and if you cannot get-on positively as the sole master of your space in that room alone, then you can absolutely forget about it after you add another person. — Bryant McGill

Protestants at one time were confident that their free form of confession was a vast improvement upon Catholic private confession to a priest because it is voluntary, demystified, and not routinized. But amid the acids of modernity it has volunteered itself right out of existence. Demystification has dwindled into desacralization. The escape from routinization has become a convenient cover for the demise of repentance. The postmodern pastor is trying to learn anew to listen to the deeper range of feelings of others, without forgetfulness of the Word of God. — Thomas C. Oden

Forgetfulness in people might wound, their ingratitude corrode, but this voice, pouring endlessly, year in year out, would take whatever it might be; this vow; this van; this life; this procession, would wrap them all about and carry them on, as in the rough stream of a glacier the ice holds a splinter of bone, a blue petal, some oak trees, and rolls them on. — Virginia Woolf

Yet there is no avoiding time, the sea of time, the sea of memory and forgetfulness, the years of promise, gone and unrecoverable, of the land almost allowed to claim its better destiny, only to the claim jumped by evildoers known all too well, and taken instead and held hostage to the future we must live in now forever. — Thomas Pynchon

Flute Notes from a Reedy Pond
Now coldness comes sifting down, layer after layer,
To our bower at the lily root.
Overhead the old umbrellas of summer Wither like pithless hands.
There is little shelter.
Hourly the eye of the sky enlarges its blank
Dominion. The stars are no nearer. Already frog-mouth and fish-mouth drink The liquor of indolence, and all thing sink Into a soft caul of forgetfulness. The fugitive colors die. Caddis worms drowse in their silk cases,
The lamp-headed nymphs are nodding to sleep like statues.
Puppets, loosed from the strings of the puppetmaster
Wear masks of horn to bed. This is not death, it is something safer. The wingy myths won't tug at us anymore: The molts are tongueless that sang from above the water Of golgotha at the tip of a reed,
And how a god flimsy as a baby's finger
Shall unhusk himself and steer into the air. — Sylvia Plath

There is joy in self-forgetfulness. So I try to make the light in others' eyes my sun, the music in others' ears my symphony, the smile on others' lips my happiness. — Helen Keller

808. Do not punish forgetfulness. ADHD children cannot hold rules, routines, and tasks in their minds. They forget everyday rules and tasks, even though they have been doing them for months or years. Every day is a new day in their minds, and they do not know what to do unless you tell them. — Susan Ashley

But why would anyone on a joyous occasion rake over past unpleasantness and dwell on painful events horrible to experience and repellent to recall? Silence is mightier than words. It clothes the wreckage that befalls us in the deep folds of forgetfulness unless someone stirs up the painful memories for the sole purpose of edifying us by example and, as with illnesses, of helping us avoid the causes that led us to them. — Gregory Of Nazianzus

For that there was no atonement; but though forgiveness was impossible, forgetfulness was possible still, — Oscar Wilde

The past could always be annihilated. Regret, denial, or forgetfulness could do that. But the future was inevitable. — Oscar Wilde

And when he is out of sight, quickly also he is out of mind. — Thomas A Kempis

The author emphasizes the importance of self-forgetfulness when his statistics were marred by a bad outing. He forgot all of that outing to such an extent that he quipped, What was my name? — Jim Bouton

What had been a perceived threat, a lien in a sense on future human behavior, was quickly reduced to a historical curiosity. — Arthur C. Clarke

The greatest and saddest defect is not credulity, but an habitual forgetfulness that our science is ignorance. — Henry David Thoreau

A society is always eager to cover misdeeds with a cloak of forgetfulness, but no society can fully repress an ugly past when the ravages persist into the present. America owes a debt of justice which it has only begun to pay. — Martin Luther King Jr.

We'll act as if all this were a bad dream.
A bad dream.
To the person in the bell jar, blank and stopped as a dead baby, the world itself is the bad dream.
A bad dream.
I remembered everything.
I remembered the cadavers and Doreen and the story of the fig tree and Marco's diamond and the sailor on the Common and Doctor Gordon's wall-eyed nurse and the broken thermometers and the Negro with his two kinds of beans and the twenty pounds I gained on insulin and the rock that bulged between sky and sea like a gray skull.
Maybe forgetfulness, like a kind snow, would numb and cover them.
But they were part of me. They were my landscape. — Sylvia Plath

That man is perfect in faith who can come to God in the utter dearth of his feelings and desires, without a glow or an aspiration, with the weight of low thoughts, failures, neglects, and wandering forgetfulness, and say to Him, "Thou art my refuge. — George MacDonald

victims of terrible crimes were often sent there through the Lethe, the river of forgetfulness, to forget the heinous crimes that tortured them in life. — C. Gockel

Though he walked and breathed, and about him living leaves and flowers were stirred by the same cool wind as fanned his face, Frodo felt he was in a timeless land that did not fade or change or fall into forgetfulness. When he had gone and passed again into the outer world, still Frodo the wanderer from the Shire would walk there, upon the grass among elanor and niphredil in fair Lothlorien — J.R.R. Tolkien

I believe in the sun. In the tangle of human failures of fear, greed and forgetfulness, the sun gives me clarity. — Joy Harjo

Those who will never be fooled can never be delighted, because without self-forgetfulness there can be no delight, and this is a great and grievous loss. — Alan Jacobs

Spiritual leaders teach that waking up is a process, that it doesn't just happen once and for all, but must occur again and again when we realize we have forgotten the miracle of being alive, and in recognizing our forgetfulness, we wake to the miracle once again. In the moments we are awake to the wonder of simply being alive, gratitude flows, no matter our circumstances. — M.J. Ryan

We cannot tear out a single page of our life, but we can throw the whole book in the fire. — George Sand

As we drew nearer the green shore the bearded man told me of that land, the Land of Zar, where dwell all the dreams and thoughts of beauty that come to men once and then are forgotten. And when I looked upon the terraces again I saw that what he said was true, for among the sights before me were many things I had once seen through the mists beyond the horizon and in the phosphorescent depths of the ocean. — H.P. Lovecraft

Let us chide ourselves for past forgetfulness, and pray for grace ever to bear Him in fondest remembrance. Lord, paint upon the eyeballs of my soul the image of Thy Son. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Without a little negligence, life would be intolerable. — Mason Cooley

For with eyes made clear by many tears, and a heart softened by the tenderest sorrow, she recognized the beauty of her sister's life - uneventful, unambitious, yet full of the genuine virtues which 'smell sweet, and blossom in the dust', the self-forgetfulness that makes the humblest on earth remembered soonest in heaven, the true success which is possible to all. — Louisa May Alcott

I have never seen such extreme partisanship, such bitter partisanship, and such forgetfulness of the fate of our fathers and of the Constitution. — Robert Byrd

In what a delightful communion with God does that man live who habitually seeketh love! With the same mantle thrown over him from the cross - with the same act of amnesty, by which we hope to be saved - injuries the most provoked, and transgressions the most aggravated, are covered in eternal forgetfulness. — Elias Lyman Magoon

If a man dreams that he has committed a sin before which the sun hid his face, it is often safe to conjecture that, in sheer forgetfulness, he wore a red tie, or brown boots with evening dress. — Arthur Machen

How grateful we should be that a wise Creator fashioned an earth and placed us here, with a veil of forgetfulness of our previous existence so that we might experience a time of testing, an opportunity to prove ourselves in order to qualify for all that God has prepared for us to receive. — Thomas S. Monson

Misunderstandings arise only in undefined relationships — Anuradha Bhattacharyya

I would rather instill in my amateur students love, than knowledge, of music. Left with only knowledge, they will at the end close their books and consign the course to forgetfulness. But if they have learned to love but the smallest part of the art, they are likely to pursue some phase of it the rest of their lives. — Ernst Bacon

Zen is not "attained" by mirror-wiping mediation, but by "self-forgetfulness in the existential 'present' of life here and now." We do not "come", we "are." Don't strive to become, but be. — Bruce Lee

Silence sits immense upon my soul. Then comes hope with a smile and whispers, "There is joy in self-forgetfulness. — Helen Keller

My galley, charged with forgetfulness,
Thorough sharp seas in winter nights doth pass
'Tween rock and rock; and eke mine enemy, alas,
That is my lord, steereth with cruelness;
And every oar a thought in readiness,
As though that death were light in such a case.
An endless wind doth tear the sail apace
Of forced sighs and trusty fearfulness.
A rain of tears, a cloud of dark disdain,
Hath done the weared cords great hinderance;
Wreathed with error and eke with ignorance.
The stars be hid that led me to this pain.
Drowned is reason that should me consort,
And I remain despairing of the port. — Thomas Wyatt

Poor friend and learned physician, my sensitive and gentle companion, instead of treating and curing the sick you yourself have fallen beneath the yoke of death, and now belong to death's kingdom. For many months you have witnessed such suffering and horror as the human mind can scarcely conceive, as he who sees cannot believe. Perhaps it is for the best that your nerves have betrayed you, that a benevolent veil of forgetfulness has fallen upon your mind. Now, at least, you need not fret or worry about what the future may hold in store for you. — Miklos Nyiszli

He liked being in a place where everything from forgetfulness to homicide might be blamed on the heat. — Jan Karon

Human life is designed as a self-study program.
Existence is always one undivided. It is what we often call the Light. It is a pure consciousness of unconditional love. Out of the Light the idea of darkness is created. There is no existence of light and darkness, as separated energies. The separation is illusionary.
Experiencing ourselves as humans is an exploration of the greater Self in a localised condition.
A dense reality is created to facilitate the idea of forgetfulness.
Now we collectively entered a new time of remembering. It is not necessary anymore to create the illusion of self-disconnection from the energy source. — Raphael Zernoff

With the compelling convincingness of dreams, which are vague yet exact, the ghost voice draws us (to ourselves and all of our component selves), lifts them casually out of the well of the past
the well wherein nothing is lost, the deep well of forgetfulness, and remembrance
and tosses them mockingly on the glassy table surface of our consciousness. There we are forced to consider them. There we are forced to regard, analyze, and re-understand. — Heinrich Robert Zimmer

As far as I'm concerned it's the other way round. We repeat what we remember. Only forgetfulness sets us free. — Margot Livesey

Traces of human life vanish very quickly: Glafira Petrovna's estate had not yet gone wild, but it seemed already to have sunk into that quiet repose which possesses everything on earth wherever there is no restless human infection to affect it. — Ivan Turgenev

The cause of the distress of a living entity is forgetfulness of his relationship with God. — Anonymous

Another page turns on the calendar, April now, not March.
...
I am spinning the silk threads of my story, weaving the fabric of my world ... I spun out of control. Eating was hard. Breathing was hard. Living was hardest.
I wanted to swallow the bitter seeds of forgetfulness ... Somehow, I dragged myself out of the dark and asked for help.
I spin and weave and knit my words and visions until a life starts to take shape.
There is no magic cure, no making it all go away forever. There are only small steps upward; an easier day, an unexpected laugh, a mirror that doesn't matter anymore.
I am thawing. — Laurie Halse Anderson

Much as oblivion is the death of sorrow
So death is life's forgetfulness — Mihai Eminescu

I can remember much forgetfulness. — Hart Crane

There are some people...who might feel that such practices are misguided, like trying to wield heaven's powers on earth. And yet it was only in the carefully planned and created garden of Yugiri that I had found a sense of order and calm and even, for a brief moment of time, forgetfulness. — Tan Twan Eng

Though you forget the way to the Temple,
There is one who remembers the way to your door:
Life you may evade, but Death you shall not.
You shall not deny the Stranger. — T. S. Eliot

None in this age will amass wealth except those having five traits ofcharacter. High hopes; abnormal greediness; excessive miserliness, lack of fearing Allaah; and forgetfulness of the coming world. — Sufyan Al-Thawri

I also remember being struck by de Sade's will, in which he asked that his ashes be scattered to the four corners of the earth in the hope that humankind would forget both his writings and his name. I'd like to be able to make that demand; commemorative ceremonies are not only false but dangerous, as are all statues of famous men. Long live forgetfulness, I've always said - the only dignity I see is in oblivion. — Luis Bunuel

Give me to drink mandragora. — William Shakespeare

There are two barriers that often prevent communication between the young and their elders. The first is middle-aged forgetfulness of the fact that they themselves are no longer young. The second is youthful ignorance of the fact that the middle aged are still alive. — Jessamyn West

If there is pain, use it as an awareness, as meditation, as a sharpening of the soul. And when pleasure is there, use it as a droning, as a forgetfulness. Both are ways to reach God. One is to remember yourself totally, and one is to forget yourself totally. — Rajneesh

The amusement she had drawn from their disapproval was a slavish remnant, a derisive dance on the north bank of the Ohio. There was no question of forgiving them. She had not, in any case, a forgiving nature; and the injury they had done her was not done by them. If she were to start forgiving she must needs forgive Society, the Law, the Church, the History of Europe, the Old Testament, great-great-aunt Salome and her prayer-book, the Bank of England, Prostitution, the Architect of Apsley Terrace, and half a dozen other useful props of civilization. All she could do was to go on forgetting them. But now she was able to forget them without flouting them by her forgetfulness. — Sylvia Townsend Warner

Do You Have DID?

Determining if you have DID isn't as easy as it sounds. In fact, many clinicians and psychotherapists have such difficulty figuring out whether or not people have DID that it typically takes them several years to provide an accurate diagnosis. Because many of the symptoms of DID overlap with other psychological diagnoses, as well as normal occurrences such as forgetfulness or talking to yourself, there is a great deal of confusion in making the diagnosis of DID. Although this section will provide you with information which may help you determine if you have DID, it is a good idea to consult with a professional in the mental health field so that you can have further confirmation of your findings. — Karen Marshall

By the river of forgetfulness, I found honesty. — Kristian Goldmund Aumann

The devil doesn't fill us with hatred for God, but with forgetfulness of God. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

When love dies and marriage lies in ruins, the first casualty is honest memory, decent, impartial recall of the past. Too inconvenient, too damning of the present. It's the spectre of old happiness at the feast of failure and desolation. So, against that headwind of forgetfulness I want to place my little candle of truth and see how far it throws its light. — Ian McEwan

Forgetfulness, the unhistorical, is ... the atmosphere, in which alone life can come into being. In order to understand it, let us imagine a youth who is seized with a passion for a woman, or a man who is swayed by a passion for his work. In both cases what lies behind them has ceased to exist and yet this state (the most unhistorical that can be imagined) is that in which every action, every great deed is conceived and accomplished. — Georg Brandes

Please be my friend. — Kevin Mcpherson Eckhoff

Sing little box

Don't let sleep overtake you
The world's awake within you

In your four-sided emptiness
We turn distance into nearness
Forgetfulness into memory

Don't let your nails come loose

For the very first time
We watch sights beyond this world
Through your keyhole

Turn your key in our mouths
Swallow words and numbers
Out of your song

Don't let your lid fly open
Your bottom drop

Sing little box — Vasko Popa

Let it come, let it come The time that we will love. So patient have I been That I've forgetten everything: Fear and suffering Have departed for the heavens, And an unholy thirst Darkens my veins. Let it come, let it come The time that we will love. Like the field Left to forgetfulness, Growing and flowering With incense and weeds, And the fierce buzzing Of dirty flies. Let it come, let it come The time that we will love. I loved the desert, burnt orchards, musty shops, tepid drinks. I dragged myself through stinking alleys, and with eyes closed I offered myself to the sun, the god of fire. — Arthur Rimbaud

You dump trash. You dump yard waste and old ripped couches that smell like body odor and forgetfulness. You dump cigarette butts and banana peels and hazardous waste. But people? — Autumn Doughton

Thankfully, the nature of pain reminds us of what the ease of pleasure foolishly allows us to forget. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

Life's best balm - Forgetfulness! — Felicia Hemans