Memory And Happiness Quotes & Sayings

It is true that I suffered in a difficult and stupid love affair and that I worked at one bad job after another to try to keep myself going. Nevertheless, I remember that time as extraordinary, and I wouldn't trade it for anything. I don't even wish now that I had more money. And had I been asked if I was suffering at the time, I would have said a defiant no. — Siri Hustvedt

I enjoyed this scene; and yet my enjoyment was embittered both by the memory of the past, and the anticipation of the future. I was formed for peaceful happiness. During my youthful days discontent never visited my mind; and if I was ever overcome by ennui, the sight of what is beautiful in nature, or the study of what is excellent and sublime in the productions of man, could always interest my heart, and communicate elasticity to my spirits. But I am a blasted tree; the bolt has entered my soul; and I felt then that I should survive to exhibit, what I shall soon cease to be
a miserable spectacle of wrecked humanity, pitiable to others, and intolerable to myself. — Mary Shelley

It was a momentary laughter, in which our souls united. But I think there comes a point in love, a unique moment which later on the soul seeks in vain to surpass, and that the effort to revive such happiness depletes it; that nothing thwarts happiness so much as the memory of happiness. — Andre Gide

it was not even imaginative; it lives in my memory mainly as a period of humdrum, prosaic happiness and awakes none of the poignant nostalgia with which I look back on my much less happy boyhood. It is not settled happiness but momentary joy that glorifies the past. To — C.S. Lewis

Sensible of the importance of Christian piety and virtue to the order and happiness of a state, I cannot but earnestly commend to you every measure for their support and encouragement ... Manners, by which not only the freedom, but the very existence of the republics, are greatly affected, depend much upon the public institutions of religion and the good education of youth; in both these instances our fathers laid wise foundations, for which their posterity have had reason to bless their memory. — John Hancock

The things we remember are what we hold on to. And what we hold on to becomes the story of our lives. — Katherine Center

And then, abruptly, the memory of his dead wife returned to him, and probably thinking it too complicated to inquire into how, at such a time, he could have allowed himself to be carried away by an impulse of happiness, he confined himself to a gesture which he habitually employed whenever any perplexing question came into his mind: that is, he passed his hand across his forehead, dried his eyes, and wiped his glasses. And he — Marcel Proust

The memory of that event has only just come back to me, now doubly painful: regret for a vanished past and, above all, remorse for lost opportunities. Mithra-Grandchamp is the women we were unable to love, the chances we failed to seize, the moments of happiness we allowed to drift away. Today it seems to me that my whole life was nothing but a string of those small near misses: a race whose result we know beforehand but in which we fail to bet on the winner. — Jean-Dominique Bauby

Those were her best days, although there was always something feckless about her, something so slack and almost fearful in her too frequent smile, so that when you saw Mignon being happy, you always thought: "It can't last." She had the febrile gaiety of a being without a past, without a present, yet she existed thus, without memory or history, only because her past was too bleak to think of and her future too terrible to contemplate; she was the broken blossom of the present tense. — Angela Carter

And I just know that this memory will be forever burned into my brain, because this kind of magic - the kind that can't be conjured with a spell, where everything is just right, and all your problems vanish for three perfect minutes - doesn't happen everyday. — Michelle Krys

And if all could with one voice be asked whether they wished to be happy, there is no doubt they would all answer that they would. And this would not be possible unless the thing itself, which we call "happiness", were held in memory. — Augustine Of Hippo

More than almost anything else, the experience of parenthood exposes the gulf between our experiencing and remembering selves. Our experiencing selves tell researchers that we prefer doing the dishes
or napping, or shopping, or answering emails
to spending time with our kids. (I am very specifically referring here to Kahneman's study of 909 Texas women.) But our remembering selves tell researchers that no one
and nothing
provides us with so much joy as our children. It may not be the happiness we live day to day, but it's the happiness we think about, the happiness we summon and remember, the stuff that makes up our life-tales. — Jennifer Senior

He would wake for no reason in the middle of the night, and the memory of the self-absorbed love was revealed to him for what it was: a pitfall of happiness that he despised and desired at the same time, but from which it was impossible to escape. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

I got the idea from our family's plant book. The place where we recorded things you cannot trust to memory. The page begin's with the person's picture. A photo if we can find it. If not, a sketch or a painting by Peeta. Then, in my most careful handwriting, come all the details it would be a crime to forget. Lady licking Prim's cheek. My father's laugh. Peeta's father with the cookies. The colour of Finnick's eyes. What Cinna would do with a length of silk. Boggs reprogramming the Holo. Rue poised on her toes, arms slightly extended, like bird about to take flight. On and on. We seal the pages with salt water and promises to live well to make their deaths count. Haymitch finally joins us, contributing twenty-three years of tributes he was forced to mentor. Additions become smaller. An old memory that surfaces. A late promise preserved between the pages. Strange bits of happiness, like the photo of Finnick and Annie's newborn son. — Suzanne Collins

Happiness is good health and a bad memory. — Ingrid Bergman

"Mom, Arnie Welsh keeps calling me a geek. He says it like it's a bad thing. Is being a geek a bad thing?"
"Of course not, Soda Pop. And don't listen to labels. They don't matter."
"What are labels?"
"It's an imaginery sticker people slap on you with the word they think you are written on it. It doesn't matter who they think you are. It matters who you think you are."
"I think I might be a geek."
She laughed. "Then you be a geek. Just be whatever makes you happy, Soda Pop, and I'll be happy too. — Samantha Young

It was an image Melody would never forget. Or was it the emotions the image conjured - hope, excitement, and fear of the unknown, all three tightly braided together, creating a fourth emotion that was impossible to define. She was getting a second chance at happiness and it tickled like swallowing fifty fuzzy caterpillars. — Lisi Harrison

I say, I can not identify that thing which is called happiness, that thing whose token is a laugh, or a smile, or a silent serenity on the lip. I may have been happy, but it is not in my conscious memory now. Nor do I feel a longing for it, as though I had never had it; my spirit seeks different food from happiness, for I think I have a suspicion of what it is. I have suffered wretchedness, but not because of the absence of happiness, and without praying for happiness. I pray for peace
for motionlessness
for the feeling of myself, as of some plant, absorbing life without seeking it, and existing without individual sensation. I feel that there can be no perfect peace in individualness. Therefore, I hope one day to feel myself drank up into the pervading spirit animating all things. I feel I am an exile here. I still go straying. — Herman Melville

Then very haltingly at first, but afterwards more easily, he began to tell of the thing that was hidden in his life, the haunting memory of a beauty and a happiness that filled his heart with insatiable longings, that made all the interests and spectacle of worldly life seem dull and tedious and vain to him. — H.G.Wells

The sound of laughter is like the vaulted dome of a temple of happiness, "that delectable trance of happiness, that ultimate peak of delight. Laughter of delight, delight of laughter." There is no doubt: this laughter goes "far beyond joking, jeering, and ridicule." The two sisters stretched out on their bed are not laughing at anything concrete, their laughter has no object; it is an expression of being rejoicing at being ... and in this ecstatic laughter he loses all memory, all desire, cries out to the immediate present of the world, and needs no other knowledge. — Milan Kundera

And if Amsterdam was hell, and if hell was a memory, then he realized that perhaps there was some purpose to his being lost. Cut off from everything that was familiar to him, unable to discover even a single point of reference, he saw that his steps, by taking him nowhere, were taking him him nowhere but into himself. He was wandering inside himself, and he was lost. Far from troubling him, this state of being lost because a source of happiness, of exhilaration. He breathed it into his very bones. As if on the brink of some previously hidden knowledge, he breathed it into his very bones and said to himself, almost triumphantly: I am lost. — Paul Auster

Through memory to knowledge on the way to stars that are stepping down to the stuffy rooms of modern bureaucrats, illuminating their ceilings, their horizons where everything is easily resolved by the piles of paper and recipes for how to live, create, run, eat, breathe, learn how to love, how to make love, how to sleep, how to dream, how happiness is achieved under the artificial stars of the new sky that emerged from the bureaucratic rooms of aspiring and impotent minds, unable to love, even though they had all their life to learn what they preach. — Dejan Stojanovic

Human. Happiness. Death.
Everything becomes one pale
memory in the flow of time.
Spirit - always want the impossible and feel pain.
Memory - an attempt to find entirety in the endless parody
called human life.
Freedom, policy, power, sex, violence, destruction, war.
All extremes of ego are unconscious rebellion against death and loneliness.
When you realize, the meaning is lost.
I just want to believe:
when I die, I will flying like a bird ... or like dream ... — Alexandar Tomov

Later, that dozy embrace solidified in his memory as the single moment of artless, charmed happiness in their separate and difficult lives. — Annie Proulx

Each in the most hidden sack kept
the lost jewels of memory,
intense love, secret nights and permanent kisses,
the fragment of public or private happiness.
A few, the wolves, collected thighs,
other men loved the dawn scratching
mountain ranges or ice floes, locomotives, numbers.
For me happiness was to share singing,
praising, cursing, crying with a thousand eyes.
I ask forgiveness for my bad ways:
my life had no use on earth. — Pablo Neruda

Happiness is in love, in service, and in beautiful memory. — Debasish Mridha

I had always known in my heart that the experience would never leave me, that it was now woven into my very fibers, an inextricable part of my past, but I had hoped never to have to recollect it, consciously, and in full, ever again. Like an old wound, it gave off a faint twinge now and again, but less and less often, less and less painfully, as the years went on and my happiness, sanity and equilibrium were assured. Of late, it had been like the outermost ripple on a pool, merely the faint memory of a memory. — Susan Hill

Suddenly the memory of his wife came back to him and, no doubt feeling it would be too complicated to try to understand how he could have yielded to an impulse of happiness at such a time, he confined himself, in a habitual gesture of his whenever a difficult question came to his mind, to passing his hand over his forehead, wiping his eyes and the lenses of his lorgnon. Yet he could not be consoled for the death of his wife, but, during the two years he survived her, would say to my grandfather: It's odd, I think of my poor wife often, but I can't think of her for a long time. — Marcel Proust

I heard a definition once: Happiness is health and a short memory! I wish I'd invented it, because it is very true. — Audrey Hepburn

When I met a truly beautiful girl, I would tell her that if she spent the night with me, I would write a novel or a story about her. This usually worked; and if her name was to be in the title of the story, it almost always worked. Then, later, when we'd passed a night of delicious love-making together, after she'd gone and I'd felt that feeling of happiness mixed with sorrow, I sometimes would write a book or story about her. Sometimes her character, her way about herself, her love-making, it sometimes marked me so heavily that I couldn't go on in life and be happy unless I wrote a book or a story about that woman, the happy and sad memory of that woman. That was the only way to keep her, and to say goodbye to her without her ever leaving. — Roman Payne

He had understood that memory was a place, a real place that one could visit, and that to spend a few moments among the dead was not necessarily bad for you, that it could in fact be a source of great comfort and happiness. — Paul Auster

Victor had always said that most of the time happiness crept up on you when you were doing something else. He also said no happiness was ever wasted, because every happiness stays with you, and you can revisit it in your memory any time you're sad, or lonely or depressed. It was kinda corny, but like a lot of corny things, it was true. Maybe that was what made it corny in the first place. — Charlie Fletcher

You know every story, every wound, every memory. Their whole life's happiness is wrapped up in you... every single second. Don't you get it? Look down the road to her wedding. I'm in a room alone with her, fixing her veil, fluffing her dress, telling her no woman has ever looked so beautiful. And my fear is she'll be thinking, "I wish my mom was here. — Jackie Harrison

It's great to reminisce about good memories of my past. It was enjoyable when it was today. So learning to enjoy today has two benefits: it gives me happiness right now, and it becomes a good memory later. — George Foreman

Every memory becomes a golden treasure to us when we have lived our lives with tragedy and triumphs, sadness and happiness. — Debasish Mridha

Once again Anastasia briefly returned to me the sensation of happiness. Then it all dissipated, leaving me nonetheless a particle of the pleasant and shining sensation in the form of a memory. — Vladimir Megre

When love dies and a 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. — Ian McEwan

We are made happy when reason can discover no occasion for it. The memory of some past moments is more persuasive than the experience of present ones. There have been visions of such breadth and brightness that these motes were invisible in their light. — Henry David Thoreau

Memory, imagination, and passionately responding in accord with the deeply embedded impulse to act with decency are pliable mechanisms that we can employ to attain happiness. — Kilroy J. Oldster

I had no memory at all of Sarah and I was completely free from anxiety, jealousy, insecurity, hate: my mind was a blank sheet on which somebody had just been on the point of writing a message of happiness. I felt sure that when my memory came back, the writing would continue and that I should be happy. — Graham Greene

The days I'd passed with my mom before she died were still there, it seemed, seared into the corners of my heart.
The atmosphere of the station brought it all back. I could see myself running to the hospital, glad to be seeing my mother again. You never know you're happy until later. Because physical sensations like smells and exhaustion don't figure into our memories, I guess. Only the good bits bob up into view.
I was always startled by the snatches of memory that I saw as happy, how they came.
This time, it was the feeling I got when I stepped out onto the platform. The sense of what it had been like to be on my way to see my mom, for her still to be alive, if only for the time being, if only for that day. The happiness of that knowledge had come back to life inside me.
And the loneliness of that moment. The helplessness. — Banana Yoshimoto

Let me begin by telling you that I was in love. An ordinary statement, to be sure, but not an ordinary fact, for so few of us learn that love is tenderness, and tenderness is not, as a fair proportian suspect, pity; and still fewer know that happiness in love is not the absolute focusing of all emotion in another: one has always to love a good many things which the beloved must come only to symbolize; the true beloveds of this world are in their lovers's eyes lilacs opening, ship lights, school bells, a landscape, remembered conversations, friends, a child's Sunday, lost voices, one's favourite suit, autumn and all seasons, memory, yes, it being the earth and water of existence, memory. — Truman Capote

And be thinking, remembering. Trying to. All difficult dark stuff, stories stuffed away, like old socks into old pillowcases. Not quite knowing the weight of truth in them much more. And things that I have let be a long time in the interests of happiness, or at least that daily contentment that I was once I do believe mistress of — Sebastian Barry

Happiness is nothing more than having a poor memory. — Lou Holtz

Sometimes I think of you and I feel giddy. Memory makes me lightheaded, drunk on champagne. All the things we did. And if anyone has said this was the price I would have agreed to pay it. That surprises me; that with the hurt and the mess comes a shift of recognition. It was worth it. Love is worth it. — Jeanette Winterson

However, amidst the bouquets of laughter that people tried to gift me, there was that memory of yours, lips curled up in a fashion, which makes my heart skip a beat even now. And then the happiness felt incomplete, because I missed you, missed you everyday more than the previous day. — Anmol Rawat

Janus found himself drawn to the edge of the rink, staring fixedly at Candace as she approached: grinning, puffing steam, her cheeks flushed, her brown hair peeking out from under a knitted cap, her hazel eyes sparkling green and gold in the bright winter sun. She wore a wool riding coat, brilliant red trimmed with black, which stood out amid the ice like a ruby on white gold. Janus thought she had never looked more beautiful than she did in that moment, with all her cares and duties laid aside for the pure joy of living. Janus wanted to freeze the moment in his memory and carry it forever: This is what happiness looks like. I never knew. — Chris Lester

I have done things that are memorable to me. Some of them had brought sadness instantly to me, and others happiness. But I wished I had not made them in the first place, even more for the joyful ones. For they bring pain in me, as what have had happened there will be a memory, and will always stay as one. We can never relive those times, and that is what's haunting me, and brings pain in me ... — Anonymous

This I have known, and these have come again
With echoing happiness in heart and brain;
Time standing still, surrendering to me
Beauty that otherwise would cease to be. — William Kean Seymour

Perhaps it's that you can't go back in time, but you can return to the scenes of a love, of a crime, of happiness, and of a fatal decision; the places are what remain, are what you can possess, are what is immortal. They become the tangible landscape of memory, the places that made you, and in some way you too become them. They are what you can possess and in the end what possesses you. — Rebecca Solnit

This moment will never ever come back, so create a memory and hold it tight. — Debasish Mridha

But the first glad moment in our first love is a vision which returns to us to the last, and brings with it a thrill of feeling intense and special as the recurrent sensation of a sweet odour breathed in a far off hour of happiness. It is a memory that gives a more exquisite touch to tenderness, that feeds the madness of jealousy, and adds the last keenness to the agony of despair. — George Eliot

There are some delightful places in this world which have a sensual charm for the eyes. One loves them with a physical love. We people who are attracted by the countryside cherish fond memories of certain springs, certain woods, certain ponds, certain hills, which have become familiar sights and can touch our hearts like happy events.
Sometimes indeed the memory goes back towards a forest glade, or a spot on a river bank or an orchard in blossom, glimpsed only once on a happy day, but preserved in our heart. — Guy De Maupassant

Wild animals run from the dangers they actually see, and once they have escaped them worry no more. We however are tormented alike by what is past and what is to come. A number of our blessings do us harm, for memory brings back the agony of fear while foresight brings it on prematurely. No one confines his unhappiness to the present. — Seneca.

The Value of a Smile at Christmas It costs nothing, but creates much. It enriches those who receive, without impoverishing those who give. It happens in a flash and the memory of it sometimes lasts forever. None are so rich they can get along without it, and none so poor but are richer for its benefits. It creates happiness in the home, fosters good will in a business, and is the countersign of friends. — Dale Carnegie

Inasmuch as art preserves, with the promise of happiness, the memory of the goal that failed, it can enter, as a 'regulative idea,' the desperate struggle for changing the world. Against all fetishism of the productive forces, against the continued enslavement of individuals by the objective conditions (which remain those of domination), art represents the ultimate goal of all revolutions: the freedom and happiness of the individual. — Herbert Marcuse

Mental imbalance is about as acceptable as herpes. It's never going to be accepted. But really, it's a disease just like cancer. It just happens, and eats away all the good parts of your brain, like judgment and happiness and perception and memory and life. And you can die from depression just like any other disease. And it's not as if people choose it. So why is it still a joke of medicine? "She died of cancer." is a lot more socially acceptable to people than "She committed suicide. — Sarahbeth Purcell

To eke out the most happiness from an experience, we must anticipate it, savor it as it unfolds, express happiness, and recall a happy memory. — Gretchen Rubin

They say that Hope is happiness But genuine Love must prize the past; And Mem'ry wakes the thoughts that bless: They rose first
they set the last. And all that mem'ry loves the most Was once our only hope to be: And all that hope adored and lost Hath melted into memory. Alas! It is delusion all
The future cheats us from afar: Nor can we be what we recall, Nor dare we think on what we are. — Lord Byron

Happiness is health and a short memory! — Audrey Hepburn

Happiness is nothing more than good health and a bad memory. — Albert Schweitzer

The time must come to all of us, who live long, when memory is more than prospect. An angler who has reached this stage and reviews the pleasure of life will be grateful and glad that he has been an angler, for he will look back on days radiant with happiness, peaks of enjoyment that are no less bright because they are lit in memory by the light of a setting sun. — Edward Grey, 1st Viscount Grey Of Fallodon

It really is easy to forget the unpleasant if we simply refuse to recall it. Withdraw only positive thoughts from your memory bank. Let the others fade away. And your confidence, that feeling of being on top of the world, will zoom up-ward. You take a big step forward toward conquering your fear when you refuse to remember negative, self-deprecating thoughts. — David J. Schwartz

It is an exquisite and beautiful thing in our nature, that, when the heart is touched and softened by some tranquil happiness or affectionate feeling, the memory of the dead comes over it most powerfully and irresistibly. It would seem almost as though our better thoughts and sympathies were charms, in virtue of which the soul is enabled to hold some vague and mysterious intercourse with the spirits of those whom we loved in life. Alas! how often and how long may these patient angels hover around us, watching for the spell which is so soon forgotten! — Charles Dickens

Happiness and beauty are the worst things you can have in a life, because you never forget them. They go on and on ambushing you, presumably until you die. — M. John Harrison

If there were no life beyond this earth-life, some people I have known would gain immortality by the nobility of our memory of them. With every friend I love who has been taken into the brown bosom of the earth a part of me has been buried there; but their contribution of happiness, strength, and understanding to my being remains to sustain me in an altered world. — Helen Keller

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

To come to the end of a time of anxiety and fear! To feel the cloud that hung over us lift and disperse - that cloud that dulled the heart and made happiness no more than a memory! This at least is one joy that must have been known by almost every living creature. — Richard Adams

It makes me angry that you hate yourself for something that somebody else made you do. Don't let them take any more. Don't you do that Andres."
"None of this does any good, Grace. All these visits, all this talking, all this strolling down fucking memory lane. It doesn't help. And you know why it doesn't help? Because everything that's happened - it lives so deep inside me that the only way I can ever get rid of it is to die."
"That's not true, Andres."
"It is true. Happiness isn't in the cards for everyone, Grace. — Benjamin Alire Saenz

But to be included in Dick Diver's world for a while was a remarkable experience: people believed he made special reservations about them, recognizing the proud uniqueness of their destinies, buried under the compromises of how many years. He won everyone quickly with an exquisite consideration and a politeness that moved so fast and intuitively that it could be examined only in its effect. Then, without caution, lest the first bloom of the relation wither, he opened the gate to his amusing world. So long as they subscribed to it completely, their happiness was his preoccupation, but at the first flicker of doubt as to its all- inclusiveness he evaporated before their eyes, leaving little communicable memory of what he had said or done. — F Scott Fitzgerald

We no longer see the evolution of the nervous system, but that of a certain individual. The role of the memory is very important but ... not as important as we believe. Most of the important things that we do don't depend on memory. To hear, to see, to touch, to feel happiness and pain; these are functions which are independent of memory; it is an a priori thing. Thus, for me, what memory does is to modify that a priori thing, and this it does in a very profound way. — Rodolfo Llinas

You kissed me, and I opened my eyes and thought you were Death. You were the most beautiful thing I had ever seen, and I clung to the memory of you because it gave me comfort - the only bit of happiness I had ever had. You were my secret fantasy, my lover. My story ... Lord Death is you, and the woman he stalks ... is me."
"Why have you come," he asked, "when you now know the truth?"
"Because when you saved me, you forged a link between us. I don't believe it will ever break."
"Bella," he whispered, "I couldn't allow you to take your life. Couldn't bear the thought of existing in a world that you did not. — Charlotte Featherstone

From that point on, having also added the belief that affirmations really work, not only did my memory continue to improve, but I created affirmations for every area of my life that I wanted to advance I began using affirmations to improve my health, finances, relationships, overall happiness, confidence, as well as any and all beliefs, mindsets and habits that needed an upgrade. Nothing was off limits. There are no limits! — Hal Elrod

But happiness is good health and a bad memory they say, and I am a happy, happy man. — Tiffany Reisz

He believed that life gives us all a few moments of happiness. For some they last hours or days, for a few lucky ones they last for years. The memories from those moments stays with us forever and turns into a country of memory to which we try to go back for the rest of our lives without ever being able to — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

I've been moving a little to the music while I worked ... and then I realize I am actually dancing. It feels wonderful, though I can feel how stiff my muscles are, how rigidly I've been holding myself ... Mostly I've been moving cautiously, numbly, steeled because I know, at any moment, I may be ambushed by overwhelming grief. You never know when it's coming, the word or gesture or bit of memory that dissolved you entirely ... It happens every day at first, then not for a day or two, then there's a week when grief washes in every morning, every afternoon. — Mark Doty

So I went back in time and told her how I liked the smell of soil after the rain. It has a special place in my heart. It reminds me of my childhood days. Days spent in happiness and tranquility. — Avijeet Das

If the Soul sees, after death , what passes on this earth , and watches over the welfare of those it loves, then must its greatest happiness consist in seeing the current of its beneficent influences widening out from age to age, as rivulets widen into rivers, and aiding to shape the destinies of individuals, families, States, the World; and its bitterest punishment, in seeing its evil influences causing mischief and misery , and cursing and afflicting men, long after the frame it dwelt in has become dust, and when both name and memory are forgotten. — Albert Pike

Reiko had not kept a diary and was now denied the pleasure of assiduously rereading her record of the happiness of the past few months and consigning each page to the fire as she did so.
- Death in Midsummer and Other Stories — Yukio Mishima

Living is more than just existing. When you are living you feel emotions that you may not be able to decipher. You commit mistakes and learn from them and you will be carved in people's hearts and souls with love and happiness so when you are gone you may not be able to exist anymore but you will still be living inside people's heart and souls and your memory will forever be cherished by them. — Perky Peppermint

One of the best and the most painful things about time traveling has been the opportunity to see my mother alive. — Audrey Niffenegger

She learned how to deal with the moments when his memory lapsed. Sometimes, she felt it happen even without him saying a word. On a sunny fall day, she lay next to him on the ground, and as he dozed she felt his old life, his memories, radiate off his skin. She felt everything leave him but her. She shed her own life, too, to match him. They lay there together like a point in time. A cloud drifted in front of the sun and things to shift inside of him, and when she sensed this, she allowed things to shift inside of her, too. They became their regular selves again, still warm from the lost memory of a minute ago.
But underneath her happiness was a dread that one day this would be all they had. All associations would be lost: the smell of the gloves, the sound of the truck door slamming shut. All the details she still wanted to know. Everything reduced to nothing more than itself. — Emily Ruskovich

It was one of those rare times of shared happiness, of perfect contentment. We had a feeling of expectation, that what was already wonderful would only get better and better as time went on. These moments are one of the rarest, most fragile things in the world. You have to seize the day; you have to recall all the rotten, dirty things you endured to earn this peace. You have to remember to enjoy each minute, each hour, because although you may feel like it's going to last forever, the world plans otherwise. You want to be grateful for every precious second, but you simply can't do it. It's not in human nature to live life to the fullest. Haven't your ever noticed that equal amounts of pain and joy are not, in fact, equal in duration? Pain drags on until you wonder if life will ever be bearable again; pleasure, though, once it's reached its peak, fades faster than a trodden gardenia, and your memory searches in vain for the sweet scent. — George Alec Effinger

In this particular lifestyle the motto is "Be happy now because tomorrow you are dying," but the dying begins almost at once, and the happiness is a memory. — Philip K. Dick

I am the lover's gift; I am the wedding wreath;
I am the memory of a moment of happiness;
I am the last gift of the living to the dead;
I am a part of joy and a part of sorrow. — Kahlil Gibran

What I'm feeling, I think, is joy. And it's been some time since I've felt that blinkered rush of happiness, This might be one of those rare events that lasts, one that'll be remembered and recalled as months and years wind and ravel. One of those sweet, significant moments that leaves a footprint in your mind. A photograph couldn't ever tell its story. It's like something you have to live to understand. One of those freak collisions of fizzing meteors and looming celestial bodies and floating debris and one single beautiful red ball that bursts into your life and through your body like an enormous firework. Where things shift into focus for a moment, and everything makes sense. And it becomes one of those things inside you, a pearl among sludge, one of those big exaggerated memories you can invoke at any moment to peel away a little layer of how you felt, like a lick of ice cream. The flavor of grace. — Craig Silvey

It is anticipation and recollection that fill the heart - never the sensation of the moment. — Roger Zelazny

My friends esteem me; I often contribute to their happiness, and my heart seems as if it could not beat without them; and yet - - if I were to die, if I were to be summoned from the midst of this circle, would they feel - or how long would they feel the void which my loss would make in their existence? How long! Yes, such is the frailty of man, that even there, where he has the greatest consciousness of his own being, where he makes the strongest and most forcible impression, even in the memory, in the heart, of his beloved, there also he must perish - vanish - and that quickly. October — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Dementors are among the foulest creatures that walk this earth. They infest the darkest, filthiest places, they glory in decay and despair, they drain peace, hope, and happiness out of the air around them. Even Muggles feel their presence, though they can't see them. Get too near a Dementor and every good feeling, every happy memory will be sucked out of you. If it can, the Dementor will feed on you long enough to reduce you to something like itself - soul-less and evil. You'll be left with nothing but the worst experiences of your life. — J.K. Rowling

She seemed to have waited so long to hear those words that for a moment the earth stood still, and the moon, the trees, the grotesque shadows across the heath, became in that instant transfixed in her memory. How shall I bear this exquisite happiness? It is too much: it will destroy me. — Vera Brittain

One who cannot leave himself behind on the threshold of the moment and forget the past, who cannot stand on a single point, like a goddess of victory, without fear or giddiness, will never know what happiness is; and, worse still, will never do anything that makes others happy. — Friedrich Nietzsche

It costs nothing, but creates much. It enriches those who receive, without impoverishing those who give. It happens in a flash and the memory of it sometimes lasts forever. None are so rich they can get along without it, and none so poor but are richer for its benefits. It creates happiness in the home, fosters good will in a business, and is the countersign of friends. It is rest to the weary, daylight to the discouraged, sunshine to the sad, and Nature's best antidote for trouble. Yet it cannot be bought, begged, borrowed, or stolen, for it is something that is no earthly good to anybody till it is given away. — Dale Carnegie

I HAD one clear day of happiness, and I shall never forget it. Even the miserable ending to it cannot change its quality in my memory; for everything that Jennie and I did was good, and unhappiness came only from the outside. Not many - lovers or friends - can say as much. For friends and lovers are quick to wound, quicker than strangers, even; the heart that opens itself to the world, opens itself to sorrow. I don't think that we spoke of the question of where Jennie was to stay that night. She was sailing in the morning (on the Mauretania, I remember she told me - how strange it was to hear the old name again) and we both seemed to take it for granted that we'd stay together until then. We — Robert Nathan

As reason returned to me, memory came with it, and I saw that even on the worst days, when I thought I was utterly and completely miserable, I was nevertheless, and nearly all the time, extremely happy. That gave me something to think about. The discovery was not a pleasant one. It seemed to me that I was losing a great deal. I asked myself, wasn't I sad, hadn't I felt my life breaking up? Yes, that had been true; but each minute, when I stayed without moving in a corner of the room, the cool of the night and the stability of the ground made me breathe and rest on gladness. — Maurice Blanchot

Images flicker, each one bringing its own sorrow or its own smile. Sometimes both. At the very worst, an impenetrable and sightless black and at best, a happiness so bright that it hurts the eyes to see, coming and going on some unseen projector perpetually turned by an invisible hand. One, then another. The hollow click of the shutter. Now stop. Freeze this frame. Pluck it down and hold it close and be damned by what you see. Henri always said: the price of a memory is the memory if the sorrow it brings. — Pittacus Lore

I call myself the last philosopher, because I am the last man. No one speaks with me but myself, and my voice comes to me like the voice of a dying man! Let me associate for but one hour more with you, dear voice, with you, the last trace of the memory of all human happiness. With you I escape loneliness through self-delusion and lie myself into multiplicity and love. For my heart resists the belief that love is dead. It cannot bear the shudder of the loneliest loneliness, and so it forces me to speak as if I were two. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Listen, listen!" I interrupted her. "Forgive me if I tell you something else ... I tell you what, I can't help coming here to-morrow, I am a dreamer; I have so little real life that I look upon such moments as this now, as so rare, that I cannot help going over such moments again in my dreams. I shall be dreaming of you all night, a whole week, a whole year. I shall certainly come here to-morrow, just here to this place, just at the same hour, and I shall be happy remembering today. This place is dear to me already. I have already two or three such places in Petersburg. I once shed tears over memories ... like you ... Who knows, perhaps you were weeping ten minutes ago over some memory ... But, forgive me, I have forgotten myself again; perhaps you have once been particularly happy here ... — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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

They were one unto the other, a circle whirling evenly, effortlessly, endlessly. He knew beauty and the intensity of a dream and he was meshed in a womb he called happiness. He did not think: This must come to an end in time. A circle had no beginning or end; it existed. He did not allow thought to enter the hours that he waited for her, laved in memory of her presence. He seldom left the apartment in those days. In the outside world there was time; in time, there was impatience. Better to remain within the dream. — Dorothy B. Hughes

When the things you love exist only inside your memory they cannot be destroyed or taken from you. — Marina Tavares Dias