Memory Fades Quotes & Sayings

It was how wars really ended, Dieffenbaker supposed
not at truce tables but in cancer wards and office cafeterias and traffic jams. Wars died one tiny piece at a time, each piece something that fell like a memory, each lost like an echo that fades in winding hills. In the end even war ran up the white flag. Or so he hoped. He hoped that in the end even war surrendered. — Stephen King

Love for the beauty of the soul.
I shall love you always.
When the flower of life has gone,
ever I shall find you.
When all is lost and winter comes,
I shall be your spring time.
And memory fades and wilts then,
I shall always find you ...
I shall always find you ... — Laurel A. Rockefeller

Normal memory gradually fades into the past. Traumatic and repressed memories have a tendency to linger around. They are splintered into fragments during overwhelming events experienced as a child. Images, sensations, emotions, and beliefs are torn apart. These disconnected pieces can later erupt into consciousness as separate "memories." These fragments may surface in the form of explicit memories, which are frighteningly vivid snapshot or video-like images of traumatic experiences; or they may surface as implicit memories, which include physical sensations, emotions, or beliefs that were part of the original traumatic experiences. When implicit fragments emerge into the present without an accompanying visually explicit memory, it is very hard to discern that these feelings of anxiety, fear, shame, rage, numbness, and loneliness are related to prior trauma. — Connie A. Lofgreen

Thus is our treaty written; thus is agreement made. Thought is the arrow of time; memory never fades. What was asked is given; the price is paid. — Robert Jordan

War ends at the moment when peace permanently wins out. Not when the articles of surrender are signed or the last shot is fired, but when the last shout of a sidewalk battle fades, when the next generation starts to wonder whether the whole thing ever really happened. World War II ended as war always ends -- by trailing off into nothingness and doubt. Its final monument has never been seen by mortal eyes. It's a phantom image at the edge of a rumor: an unmarked grave in the depths of the South American jungle where a weird and decrepit old man, half forgotten by the world, at last entered the lists of oblivion. — Lee Sandlin

The memory fades, and I'm left hanging on to the ghosts of his
words. — Marie Lu

The magnitude of any one day is compromised by its passing quickly into the next, a mere moment in time which soon fades into the collective memory of our past. — Timothy W. Tron

Remembering is my only job and it's hard work. We are natural-born amnesiacs, hardwired to let go of the past, to release ourselves from history; the only way to withstand our pain is to forget our pain. We may think we don't forget, but we do. Time wears down the rough edges of our memory, sure as a stone on the river bank is smoothed by the rushing current. And like the eroding stone, the memory fades so gradually we don't even feel it. We don't notice. Eighteen years fly by, whoosh, and we don't even realize that not long ago, we didn't all drink bottled water, the Soviet Union loomed as a threat, smoking was commonplace in restaurants, and Bono was just a rockstar.
What I want... all I want... is not to forget. But it's an uphill battle. Over time, the image blurs, the scent dissipates, the memory fades. — Greg Olear

That's just pain she said. It goes eventually. And when it's gone, there's no lasting memory. Not the worst of it anyway. It fades. Our minds aren't made to hold on to the particulars of pain the way we do bliss. It's a gift God gives us, a sign of His care for us. — Charles Frazier

You can rescue someone from danger, but not from change and death; the soldier who survives the battle becomes someone else, something else, somewhere else. His war subsides; his memory fades; his nation ceases to exist; all but the elemental structures decay away; the very atoms that were once warring sides are now soil, trees, lovers, birds; all the medals are playthings for strangers; the cannons have been melted down and turned back into church bells that will become cannons again for another war. — Rebecca Solnit

Love can die. It's a mysterious thing, the death of love. Sometimes it fades slowly, like a long sunset with amazing and rare color that lasts in the memory forever. Sometimes it becomes obese and dies from its own weight, the density and slowness that come with things grown too large. It is often killed on purpose, by someone who is in love with someone or something else. But the other person, the one still in love, is a loose end, snapping and cracking in the high wind of life passing them by. Life moves so fast it creates a back draft, that leaves things scattered and blowing in its wake. Life, of all things, is alive. It is everywhere and moves beyond speed. — Scott Wolven

I am frightened now. I am frightened that when he fades from my memory, a piece of me will die too. The feelings, the things I have learned, the ideas I have had today, so many ideas, so many feelings, they will die with my memory. I fear that loss. But more, a terror that I must share with my future self. I fear what this means for me. If you forget the joy of this day, then what joy you give to others will also be forgotten, and your life has no consequence, no meaning, no worth. I am a shadow, blasted away by the sun, a meaningless occlusion of light that fades with the day. — Claire North

When my hair's all but gone and my memory fades
And the crowds don't remember my name
When my hands don't play the strings the same way
I know you will still love me the same. — Ed Sheeran

The brightest memory fades faster than the dullest ink. — Claudia Rankine

I only know two things in life for certain: I know I love her and I know when her memory of our time together fades, I'll still feel exactly the same as I do today. Time is irrelevant, as I once said to her. And I'm happy wasting every second of it on her. — Kelly Moran

What can you say about pain?
Words can trace only the shadow of the thing itself. The reality of hard, sharp physical pain is like nothing else, and it is beyond language. The world is too much with us, day and night, but when we hurt, when we really hurt, the world melts and fades and becomes a ghost, a dim memory, a silly unimportant thing. Whatever ideals, dreams, loves, fears, and thoughts we might have had become ultimately unimportant. We are alone with our pain, it is the only force in the cosmos, the only thing of substance, the only thing that matters, and if the pain is bad enough and lasts long enough, if it is the sort of agony that goes on and on, then all the things that are our humanity melt before it and the proud sophisticated computer that is the human brain becomes capable of but a single thought:
Make it stop, make it STOP! (from The Glass Flower) — George R R Martin

People can't seem to get it through their heads that there is never any healing or closure. Ever. There is only a short pause before the next "horrifying" event. People forget there is such a thing as memory, and that when a wound "heals" it leaves a permanent scar that never goes away, but merely fades a little. What really ought to be said after one of these so-called tragedies is, "Let the scarring begin. — George Carlin

When you wake up from a dream you have only a few precious moments before the details of the dream begin to dissipate and the memory fades.
Not all dreams are significant or worth remembering.
But the ones that are ... happen again.
So, wait for the dream to return. And never be afraid. Instead, consider it an opportunity to learn something profound and possibly wondrous about yourself. — Vera Nazarian

It occurred to him, for the first time, that it did unflattering things to a person when affection was taken away from them. For there had been a time when she had seemed gorgeous, and fun, and all of her naughtiness had had for him a kind of irresistible pull. It was only after he decided he didn't want her anymore that she became a shrew, and obliterated his memory of the girl she used to be. — Anna Godbersen

Memory fades, memory adjusts, memory conforms to what we think we remember. — Joan Didion

What is memory but the repository of things doomed to be forgotten, so you must have History. You must have labor to invent History. Being faithful to all that happens to you of significance, recording days, dates, events, names, sights not relying merely upon memory which fades like a Polaroid print where you see the memory fading before your eyes like time itself retreating. — Joyce Carol Oates

Can I dwell on what I scarce remember? I held a castle on the Marches once, and there was a woman I was pledged to marry, but I could not find that castle today, nor tell you the color of that woman's hair. Who knighted me, old friend? What were my favorite foods? It all fades. Sometimes I think I was born on the bloody grass in that grove of ash, with the taste of fire in my mouth and a hole in my chest. Are you my mother, Thoros? — George R R Martin

My life was hurrying, racing tragically toward its end. And yet at the same time it was dripping so slowly, so very slowly now, hour by hour, minute by minute. One always has to wait until the sugar melts, the memory dies, the wound scars over, the sun sets, the unhappiness lifts and fades away. — Simone De Beauvoir

This is how the time moves - an hour here, a day somewhere, and then it's night and then it's morning. A clock ticking on a shelf. A small child running to school, a father coming home.
Time moves over us and past us, and the feeling of lips pressed against lips fades into memory. A picture yellows at its edges. A phone rings in an empty room. — Jacqueline Woodson

It's your glove, your baseball glove. It's got a soul, a memory all its own, and a future that never fades because it has never let go of the grasp the past has on you and so many others. — Mike Barnicle

Tell him I love him yet,
As in that joyous time!
Tell him I ne'er forget,
Though memory now be crime!
Tell him when fades the light,
Upon the earth and sea,
I dream of him by night,
He must not dream of me!
He must not dream of me! — Caroline Fyffe

What happens so often as an actor is that you retain the information about the scenes that you yourself shot and you obsess over certain scenes that you found the most challenging or interesting. The rest of the film kind of falls away in your memory or it fades a little bit. — Olivia Wilde

This too shall pass. Life has a way of going on, and you do your best to move with it. A broken heart heals. Like every wound, there's a scar, a memory, but it fades. Finally you realize that an hour has passed without your thinking about it, then a day ... — Kristin Hannah

Goodbye is the absolute hardest thing to say because you have to walk away with just a memory and after awhile that memory fades. — Sarah Dillon

I note that I've lived longer in the past now, than I can expect to live in the future. I have more to remember than I have to look forward to. Memory fades, not much of the past stays, and I wouldn't mind forgetting more of it. — Denis Johnson

The memory of past favors is like a rainbow, bright, vivid, and beautiful; but it soon fades away. The in memory of injuries is engraved on the heart, and remains forever. — Thomas Chandler Haliburton

All that I possess and use Is like the fleeting vision of a dream. It fades into the realms of memory, And fading, will be seen no more. — Santideva

Slowly the golden memory of the dead sun fades from the hearts of the cold, sad clouds. Silent, like sorrowing children, the birds have ceased their song, and only the moorhen's plaintive cry and the harsh croak of the corncrake stirs the awed hush around the couch of waters, where the dying day breathes out her last.
From the dim woods on either bank, Night's ghostly army, the grey shadows, creep out with noiseless tread to chase away the lingering rear- guard of the light, and pass, with noiseless, unseen feet, above the waving river-grass, and through the sighing rushes; and Night, upon her sombre throne, folds her black wings above the darkening world, and, from her phantom palace, lit by the pale stars, reigns in stillness. — Jerome K. Jerome

I happen to know this, and I happen to know that, and maybe I know that;and I work everything out from there. Tomorrow I may forgot that this is true, but remember that something else is true, so I can reconstruct it all again. I am never quite sure of where I am supposed to begin or where I am supposed to end. I just remember enough all the time so that as the memory fades and some of the pieces fall out I can put the thing back together again every day — Richard Feynman

Moments go by in your life, becoming memories, and once the people who were apart of them are gone, so is the magic of the memory. A memory once told with laughter or detail, fades into a story long forgotten, like an ancestor remembered only by name. — Erin Waters

She clenches the crystal necklace that Dagna gave me, the one I always wear. Never lose this, Harmony. It is a symbol of the beginning. The power that still lingers inside it will help you, but even as it fades, the memory of everything until now will carry you as if it were still strong. — Brandy Nacole

Like an old photograph, time can make a feeling fade, but the memory of a first love never fades away. — Tim McGraw

Eventually, that feeling fades, but there is always the memory of those days. When you're young, everything is butterflies. What I mean is - it's all new. I guess he was telling you to still believe, to hold on to your butterflies. — Brian Joyce

As Borges himself showed us in so many stories - "The Aleph", "The Garden of Forking Paths", "The Gift", "Blue Tigers", "Shakespeare's Memory" - a blessing is always a mixed blessing.
As Borges noted sadly, he inherited a library, and blindness; we who study Borges inherit great sight, yet the rest of the library somehow fades.

(pg 303, "What I Lost When I Translated Jorge Luis Borges") — Andrew Hurley

No taste of food, no feel of water, no sound of wind, no memory of tree or grass or flower, no image of moon or star are left to me. I am naked in the dark, Sam, and there is no veil between me and the wheel of fire. I begin to see it even with my waking eyes, and all else fades. — J.R.R. Tolkien

We realize, though, because we must, that remembrance is finite. It crosses only so many generations before it fades to indistinction. One man remembers his father and perhaps his grandfather and the details of the lives that were lived. But it's harder to see further back in time. I know the name of my great-grandfather, but our living time did not intersect. We did not walk the earth at the same time. Thus, to me he's a photograph; a story I heard my grandfather tell. He's not a life I remember. And my children may not know him at all, unless by chance they can find him in a book. In time, he will be forgotten entirely, just as we all will with enough revolutions of the earth around the slowly expiring sun. Each fragile heart now beating will one day stop ... We are little more than one tree's growth of leaves in hillside forest. We will enjoy our brief moment in the sun, only to fall away with all the other to make way for the next bright young generation. — Phillip Lewis

As we get older it is our short term memory that fades rather than our long term memory. Perhaps we have evolved like this so that we are able to tell the younger generation about the stories and experiences that have formed us which may be important to subsequent generations if they are to thrive.
I worry though, about what might happen to our minds if most of the stories we hear are about greed, war, and atrocity — Philippa Perry

The most important, the longest lasting, the strongest emotional, and the most practiced memories are the ones that are embedded the deepest in the brain, and because we have retrieved them so many times previously, they are the most able to be retrieved. We all hear about people who can remember their youth, their phone number, or street address from 70 years ago, but they cannot recall what they had for breakfast. The memory of this morning's breakfast wasn't rehearsed, and wasn't very important, so it fades away quickly. — Daniel Levitin

I think about that lost dignity you must be feeling and I want to tell you it doesn't matter. Not in the great scheme of things. This is just the end. It isn't the everything of you. And it's the everything we'll remember when the memory of this fades. xxx
I can't explain this though. The words are tangled on my tongue and I'm not sure they would make a difference. Becuase I guess for you the everything is done and there is only the now. And in the now your loss of dignity is everything. — Sarah Pinborough

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