Quotes & Sayings About Old Love Memories

I lived in upstate New York until I was ten years old and we moved overseas. I have a lot of nostalgic memories of that part of the world, and I love going back there by writing the Lakeshore books. — Susan Wiggs

It is not strange that that early love of the heart should come back, as it so often does when the dim eye is brightening with its last light. It is not strange that the freshest fountains the heart has ever known in its wastes should bubble up anew when the lifeblood is growing stagnant. It is not strange that a bright memory should come to a dying old man, as the sunshine breaks across the hills at the close of a stormy day; nor that in the light of that ray, the very clouds that made the day dark should grow gloriously beautiful. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

The greatest thing of all is love. Time can't pale that as easily as it fades old memories. — Jostein Gaarder

Let this coming year be better than all the others. Vow to do some of the things you have always wanted to do but could not find the time. Call up a forgotten friend. Drop an old grudge, and replace it with some pleasant memories. Vow not to make a promise you do not think you can keep. Walk tall, and smile more. You will look 10 years younger. Do not be afraid to say, I love you. Say it again. They are the sweetest words in the world. — Ann Landers

Have you really not noticed, then, that here of all places, in this private, personal solitude that surrounds me, I have turned to you? All the memories of my youth speak to me as I walk, just as the sea shells crunch under my feet on the beach. The crash of every wave awakens far-distant reverberations within me ... I hear the rumble of bygone days, and in my mind the whole endless series of old passions surges forward like the billows. I remember my spasms, my sorrows, gusts of desire that whistled like wind in the rigging, and vast vague longings that swirled in the dark like a flock of wild gulls in a stormcloud ... On whom should I lean, if not on you? My weary mind turns for refreshment to the thought of you as a dusty traveler might sink onto a soft and grassy bank ... — Gustave Flaubert

I think LOVE. Love is what brings families together, and love is often what drives them apart. Love can act as both a fuel and an exterminator for fire, a cause of war, but also of peace. Love brings new souls to the family and removes old ones. Love is a chain of memories, like an old photo album of life- you never really can throw it away. — Chloe Gadsby-Jones

We were impelled to remain loyal for a while to the memory of Penny. It was a form of the old fashioned custom of going into mourning. It is not a question of going around with a long face. It is just a question of having a pause between the old and the new. No haste to find a substitute for the one who has given you love for years. Wait, and let fate provide the answer. — Derek Tangye

December is an old friend; it reminds you of the past, together you share some laughs and tears, you feel warm-hearted though it's freezing outside. But, the goodbye is inevitable. May the memories we share with this friend next year be filled with comfort, peace and Love. — Mohamed Atef

She had thought about that moment so often during the past few years it had dried out. It was stale, like old, odourless potpourri. But she still want back to it, because it was the only one. — Cassandra Rose Clarke

I walk at night under a moonless sky. Only the terrain guides my steps, yet my footfall is as sure as if a dozen suns lit the way. I go to meet you under a leafless tree that never seems to grow or alter its shape. I am uncertain if it still lives or has learned to disguise its death. The same thought crosses my mind when I feel your cold fingers take my hand. It is not the tree I reflect upon.

'Do you still love me?' The words tumble clumsily out of the dark.

Hesitation is its own answer, but I reply 'I'm here' anyway as if my words were whispered comfort and not a weathered blade. They are taken wrong.

'I love you too.'

Your arms wrap me up and clamp tightly around my waist. An old, familiar kiss hardens my lips. I wonder why it is I return to this place every year where only memories remain fond. Perhaps it is because I keep hoping this leafless tree will either change or die. — Richelle E. Goodrich

There are some people in your life who bring back old memories. And there are others - your first kiss, your first love, your first sex - who, the moment you see them, bring a spark ... and something far more potent. They bring back your old life and with that, potential. And possibilities. And the feeling that if you were back in that time, life could be so very different from where you're stuck right now. That's the most tantalizing thing ... I want my potential back. — Brad Meltzer

... everyone regrets something, but you can't change the past. You've got to let go and make new memories until the old ones fade enough that they don't hold any power over you. — Olivia Arran

Passers-by

Passers-by,
Out of your many faces
Flash memories to me
Now at the day end
Away from the sidewalks
Where your shoe soles traveled
And your voices rose and blent
To form the city's afternoon roar
Hindering an old silence.

Passers-by,
I remember lean ones among you,
Throats in the clutch of a hope,
Lips written over with strivings,
Mouths that kiss only for love,
Records of great wishes slept with,
Held long
And prayed and toiled for:

Yes,
Written on
Your mouths
And your throats
I read them
When you passed by. — Carl Sandburg

Though a new cloth makes you look new, when you see the old cloths, you remember the old life — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Even people whose lives have been made various by learning sometimes find it hard to keep a fast hold on their habitual views of life, on their faith in the Invisible - nay, on the sense that their past joys and sorrows are a real experience, when they are suddenly transported to a new land, where the beings around them know nothing of their history, and share none of their ideas - where their mother earth shows another lap, and human life has other forms than those on which their souls have been nourished. Minds that have been unhinged from their old faith and love have perhaps sought this Lethean influence of exile in which the past becomes dreamy because its symbols have all vanished, and the present too is dreamy because it is linked with no memories. — George Eliot

If we loved children, we would have a few. If we had them, we would want them as children, and would love the wonder with which they behold the world, and would hope some of it might open our eyes a little. We would love their games, and would want to play them once in a while, stirring in ourselves those memories of play that no one regrets, and that are almost the only things an old man can look back on with complete satisfaction. We would want children tagging along after us, or if not, then only because we would understand that they had better things to do. — Anthony Esolen

How hard it is, to be forced to the conclusion that people should be, nine tenths of the time, left alone! - When there is that in me that longs for absolute commitment. One of the poem-ideas I had was that one could respect only the people who knew that cups had to be washed up and put away after drinking, and knew that a Monday of work follows a Sunday in the water meadows, and that old age with its distorting-mirror memories follows youth and its raw pleasures, but that it's quite impossible to love such people, for what we want in love is release from our beliefs, not confirmation in them. That is where the 'courage of love' comes in - to have the courage to commit yourself to something you don't believe, because it is what - for the moment, anyway - thrills your by its audacity. (Some of the phrasing of this is odd, but it would make a good poem if it had any words ... ) — Philip Larkin

If the people who said they loved you abused or neglected you, it can feel terrifying to love again ... Commitment or love with a family feeling can be scarier still. The child in you still equates commitment with being locked into a situation where there's no escape. So as you get closer, you may become paralyzed by all your old defenses & memories. — Ellen Bass

Emma, if I had to march an eternity in slavery it would be worth it knowing that you are safe. They can bind my wrists and shackle my feet, but they can't take away my memories, my heart. If I had to see you grow old from a distance with someone else, it would have been worth it. I have had more than one lifetime to learn that our love can only come around once. — Rebecca Gober

The Wise County Bookmobile is one of the most beautiful sights in the world to me. When I see it lumbering down the mountain road like a tank ... I flag it down like an old friend. I've waited on this corner every Friday since I can remember. The Bookmobile is just a government truck, but to me it's a glittering royal coach delivering stories and knowledge and life itself. I even love the smell of books. People have often told me that one of their strongest childhood memories is the scent of their grandmother's house. I never knew my grandmothers, but I could always count on the Bookmobile. — Adriana Trigiani

Once, when I was a child, I dreamed that Grimbeard the Ghastly, on the deck of his ship The Endless Journey, threw the sword Endeavor up into the air. Up and up it spun, through the inky blackness, across the cavernous span of a hundred years, until, entirely of its own accord, my own left hand sprang out of space and stars and never-ending time and caught it. Now that I am so very old, I am dreaming once again. And in my dream, I am the one throwing the sword. It is spinning now, in the black starlit waters of my dream, right above your head, dear reader. A sword that may look second-best, and secondhand, but but carries the memories of a thousand lost fights, a history lesson in itself. Reach out, and catch it by the hilt. Swear by its name, Endeavor, to do your utmost to make the world a better place than when you arrived in it. For look! There will be dragons all around you, as camouflaged as a Stealth Dragon. — Cressida Cowell

Second-hand gloves will become lovely again, their memories are what give them the need for other hands. And the desolation of lovers is the same: that enormous emptiness carved out of such tiny beings as we are asks to be filled; the need for the new love is faithfulness to the old. — Galway Kinnell

I am, day after day, falling in love with the years that dwell in his wrinkled face and the memories of the old days which are the beats of his weak heart. — Refaat Alareer

But it is possible, it is possible: the old grief, by a great mystery of human life, gradually passes into quiet, tender joy; instead of young, ebullient blood comes a mild, serene old age: I bless the sun's rising each day and my heart sings to it as before, but now I love its setting even more, its long slanting rays, and with them quiet, mild, tender memories, dear images from the whole of a long and blessed life
and over all is God's truth, moving, reconciling, all-forgiving! — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Today I bumped into you again. You seemed like that flower long forgotten in the old diary. — Avijeet Das

I love you, Bowen Montgomery. I love you so very much, and that will never change, even when we're old and gray. I thank God for you every single day, and that you came and lifted me from the depths of despair. You showed me how it can be with a man who loves me, and you've shined light on the darkest shadows of my memories. — Maya Banks

Her grandparents' house was an old crammed up space just like all the others there, but to Sofia it had the luxuries of a palace and the reverence of a church. — Effrosyni Moschoudi

I'm chasing a decade old ghost. Searching beneath the rafters of a cobweb-filled haven lined with old memories which my brain cannot accept are dead. The light of nostalgia is burning bright inside my heart. Ignoring the emptiness around me, and hoping for a resurrection of love. — LeAnne Mechelle

I have always had a love for American geography, and especially for the landscapes of the South. One of my pleasures has been to drive across it, with no one in the world knowing where I am, languidly absorbing the thoughts and memories of old moments, of people vanished now from my life. — Willie Morris

I suppose we're all possessed in some way. Some of us with dependence on pills or wine. Others through sex or gambling. Some of us through self-destruction or anger or fear. And some of us just carry around our tiny demon as he wreaks havoc in our mind, tearing open old dusty trunks of bad memories and leaving the remnants spread everywhere. Wearing the skins of people we've hurt. Wearing the skins of people we've loved. And sometimes, when it's worst, wearing our skins. These times are the hardest. When you can see yourself confined to your bed because you have no strength or will to leave. When you find yourself yelling at someone you love because they want to help but can't. When you wake up in a gutter after trying to drink or smoke or dance away the ache - or the lack thereof. Those times when you are more demon than you are you. I — Jenny Lawson

For they might be parted for hundreds of years, she and Peter; she never wrote a letter and his were dry sticks; but suddenly it would come over her, If he were with me now what would he say?
some days, some sights bringing him back to her calmly, without the old bitterness; which perhaps was the reward of having cared for people; they came back in the middle of St. James's Park on a fine morning
indeed they did. — Virginia Woolf

There was nothing to see in the room, but his brain pulled multiple vivid memories to the forefront of his mind.
Entering the house as husband and wife, with Angela holding onto his arm. The night his father died in the downstairs bedroom while he was helpless to do anything but watch from the window; an outsider. Long years of being Angela's Peter Pan before that boy had ever existed, flitting in and out of her window, and her life. Watching the woman he loved grow old and live a life without him by night, then babysitting her killer by day. It was impossible for him to see Amelia as anything else in those early days. The days before he loved her. — Elaine White

The first thought was this: that he was a foolish old man, because all his life he'd been looking for something and it was only when Anna joined him in the bar that evening that he realized that home is not something you find outside yourself; home is something you carry inside you, and it's made from the memories of the people you love, and the people who have loved you. — Marcus Sedgwick

No. Take the heart first. Then you don't feel the cold so much. The pain so much. With the heart gone, there's no reason to stay your hand. Your eyes can look on death and not tremble. It's the heart that betrays us, makes us weep, makes us bury our friends when we should be marching ahead. It's the heart that sickens us at night and makes us hate who we are. It's the heart that sings old songs and brings memories of warm days. — Jeanette Winterson

Memories are weird. They never really leave you alone, no matter how much you try, and the funny part is--the more you try, the more they haunt you. The more you want to run away, the faster they seem to catch up, and then there comes a time when you are convinced that you have finally managed to leave them behind and move on. You rejoice. You celebrate. You have exorcised the ghosts of the past--you feel liberated, UNTIL one fine day, some old memory creeps up slowly from behind and taps you on your shoulder just to say "Hi. How's it going so far?". That is when everything comes rushing in, and you realize that maybe, just maybe, it had never really gone away. — Priyanka Naik

Until the Great Depression, most economists clung to a vision of capitalism as a perfect or nearly perfect system. That vision wasn't sustainable in the face of mass unemployment, but as memories of the Depression faded, economists fell back in love with the old, idealized vision of an economy in which rational individuals interact in perfect markets. — Paul Krugman

An awful lot of people have childhood memories of holidays in Cornwall, and the holidays are old-fashioned and hugely successful. You stick a child and a dog on one of the beaches, and they just light up; they just love it. — Martin Clunes

Love's arms were wreathed about the neck of Hope,
And Hope kiss'd Love, and Love drew in her breath
In that close kiss and drank her whisper'd tales.
They said that Love would die when Hope was gone.
And Love mourn'd long, and sorrow'd after Hope;
At last she sought out Memory, and they trod
The same old paths where Love had walked with Hope,
And Memory fed the soul of Love with tears. — Alfred Lord Tennyson

The first real memory I have, is one of the first times I was old enough to remember being at your house. We must have been about three, maybe four. I came and sat down beside you while you were playing and it's like, even then, you knew I wasn't anything special because you just ignored the hell out of me. — Melyssa Winchester

Sure, occasionally a certain sappy song or romantic movie would come on, and you'd wonder what he or she was up to, but there was no way to know. Of course, you could always pick up the phone (and more recently, text or e-mail), but that would require that person's knowing you were thinking of him or her. Where's the fun in that? You never want them to know you're thinking of them, so you refrain. Before long the memories start to fade. One day, you realize you can't quite remember how she smelled or the exact color of his eyes. Eventually, without ever knowing it, you just forget that person altogether. You replace old memories with new ones, and life goes on. It was the clean break you needed to move forward. — Brandi Glanville

Blaire,
This was my grandmother's. My father's mother. She came to visit me before she passed away. I have fond memories of her visits and when she passed on she left this ring to me. In her will I was told to give it to the woman who completes me. She said it was given to her by my grandfather who passed away when my dad was just a baby but that she'd never loved another the way she'd loved him. He was her heart. You are mine.
This is your something old.
I love you,
Rush — Abbi Glines

And then you leave the memories behind.
When you look at the pictures
It seems like it was always fun.
But you know that
in that photos everyone was actually broken deep down inside.
Wounded.
Bleeding.
Crying and yelling at the same time.
They were some kinda wounded birds ...
Eagles, wrens ...
When you remind that,
you became some kinda phoenix.
And life goes on like this.
like an uncomplete poem. — Arzum Uzun

On occasion I have observed parents shopping to clothe a son about to enter missionary service. The new suits are fitted, the new shoes are laced, and shirts, socks, and ties are bought in quantity. I met one father who said to me, 'Brother Monson, I want you to meet my son.' Pride popped his buttons; the cost of the clothing emptied his wallet; love filled his heart. Tears filled my eyes when I noticed that his [the father's] suit was old, his shoes well worn; but he felt no deprivation. The glow on his face was a memory to cherish. — Thomas S. Monson

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

On differing perspectives:

"At birth, we're yanked from a warm, safe place and thrust into a world we have no way of comprehending. Childhood is a constant routine of punishment and confusion. Hell we're depressed and misunderstood as teenagers, then frightened and unprepared as we become adults. In midlife, we watch as our youth slowly slips away; our dreams for greatness becoming pathetic memories. Old age brings loneliness, infirmity, and the constant fear of death."

"At birth, we're rescued from a dark, silent place and ushered into a world full of wonder. Childhood is a magical time, free from responsibility. We're curious and filled with energy as teenagers, and then challenged to reach our full potential as we become adults. In mid-life, we watch as our pretensions slowly slip away, our dreams for happiness finally becoming realized. Old age brings wisdom, wonderful memories, and a passionate love of life. — Rick Reynolds

Manage me, I am a mess, swept under the rug of yesterday's home improvement, a whimsical urge tossed aside for the easy reassurance of home and comfort. I am the photograph tucked away as a book-mark, in a book left half unread, once reopened to find memories crawling back into peripheral sight, faded, creased and lonely. I long to be admired, long to be held, torn and laughed at, laughed with, like a distant relative or an old friend breathing in their last breath. I missed the moment when time collapsed and memory was erased, replaced by finicky social experiments, lost in the blur of intoxication, sucked through multi-colored bendy-straws, making way for a spinning world where hub-caps stood still, but our vision didn't. If I could leave you with only one thing, it would be small, foldable, and made from trees, with a few careless words, scribbled in blue; Take a minute to learn me, take a moment to love me, because I need your love to live,and without it, I am nothing. — Alex Gaskarth

When parents talk about their pasts, the stories start to stick in your head. But the memories that you inherit look different from the now-world, and different from your own memories, too. Like they have a color all their own. I don't mean sepia-toned or something. My parents aren't even that old. I just mean that there is something particular about their glow. — Ava Dellaira

We love the old saints, missionaries, martyrs, and reformers. Our Luthers, Bunyans, Wesleys and Asburys, etc ... We will write their biographies, reverence their memories, frame their epitaphs, and build their monuments. We will do anything except imitate them. We cherish the last drop of their blood, but watch carefully over the first drop of our own. — Aiden Wilson Tozer

An old song surfaced in my memories. Love is all you need. Maybe, but in real life love was rarely all you got. Raphael and I also had pride, and guilt, and anger, jealousy and hurt feelings, — Ilona Andrews

Though a new picture gives you a picture of how old you are, when you see the old pictures, you remember the young you! — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

When you live without someone for as long as I have, love becomes this abstract concept, something you attach to a memory. And when memories are that old, they feel like dreams, and you wonder if any of it was real, or if your mind created it all. — Laura Thalassa

Mistakes are like the memories you hide in an attic: old love letters from relationships that tanked, photos of dead relatives, toys from a childhood you miss. Out of sight is out of mind, but somewhere deep inside you know they still exist. And you also know that you're avoiding them. — Jodi Picoult

While Celia was gone he walked up and down remembering what he had originally felt about Dorothea's engagement, and feeling a revival of his disgust at Mr. Brooke's indifference. If Cadwallader-- if every one else had regarded the affair as he, Sir James, had done, the marriage might have been hindered. It was wicked to let a young girl blindly decide her fate in that way, without any effort to save her. Sir James had long ceased to have any regrets on his own account: his heart was satisfied with his engagement to Celia. But he had a chivalrous nature (was not the disinterested service of woman among the ideal glories of old chivalry?): his disregarded love had not turned to bitterness; its death had made sweet odors-- floating memories that clung with a consecrating effect to Dorothea. He could remain her brotherly friend, interpreting her actions with generous trustfulness. — George Eliot

I grow old though pleased with my memories The tasks I can no longer complete Are balanced by the love of the tasks gone past I offer no apology only this plea: When I am frayed and strained and drizzle at the end Please someone cut a square and put me in a quilt That I might keep some child warm And some old person with no one else to talk to Will hear my whispers And cuddle near — Nikki Giovanni

Her moral obligation
to keep our hearts entwined.
Her preeminent love,
smelling like life,
in a good way,
familiar like an ancient woodcut,
a private postcard in the midst of a crowd,
in an old T-shirt to soak up the memories,
committed to recycling life.

repairing the nucleus. — Brian D'Ambrosio

It hadn't occurred to me that my mother would die. Until she was dying, the thought had never entered my mind. She was monolithic and insurmountable, the keeper of my life. She would grow old and still work in the garden. This image was fixed in my mind, like one of the memories from her childhood that I made her explain so intricately that I remembered it as if it were mine. She would be old and beautiful like the black-and-white photo of Georgia O'Keeffe I'd once sent her. I held fast to this image for the first couple of weeks after we left the Mayo Clinic, and then, once she was admitted to the hospice wing of the hospital in Duluth, that image unfurled, gave way to the others, more modest and true. I imagined my mother in October; I wrote the scene in my mind. And then the one of my mother in August and another in May. Each day that passed, another month peeled away. — Cheryl Strayed

I love to dance, and sing - in the shower, not in public. I'm too old to go raving, but my fondest memories are of that kind of thing - dancing, with lots of people, outside if possible. — Zadie Smith

So what should I call you now?" he said when we had our breath back. "Savior of Thorvaldor? Soon-to-Be-Master Wizard? Chief Councillor of Wise Words? My own love?"
"Sinda," I said, without the slightest twinge of old memories, or something lost, or regret. "Just Sinda. Though I like that last one almost as much."
Kiernan reached out and tucked a strand of escaping hair behind my ear. "I think I like Sinda best myself," he said. — Eilis O'Neal