A Quote by James Stephens

Let the past be content with itself, for man needs forgetfulness as well as memory

James Stephens

Quote Topics

Content Forgetfulness Itself Man Man Needs Memory Needs Past Well

Quote Author

James Stephens
Irish - Poet
February 9, 1880 - December 26, 1950

Let the past be content with itself, for man needs forgetfulness as well as memory.

James Stephens

Memory is corrupted and ruined by a crowd of memories. If I am going to have a true memory, there are a thousand things that must first be forgotten. Memory is not fully itself when it reaches only into the past. A memory that is not alive to the present does not remember the here and now, does not remember its true identity, is not memory at all. He who remembers nothing but facts and past events, and is never brought back into the present, is a victim of amnesia.

Thomas Merton

The man who forgets does not forgive, he only loses the remembrance; forgiveness is the offspring of a noble heart, of a generous mind, whilst forgetfulness is only the result of a weak memory, or of an easy carelessness.

Giacomo Casanova

Forgiving does not erase the bitter past. A healed memory is not a deleted memory. Instead, forgiving what we cannot forget creates a new way to remember. We change the memory of our past into a hope for our future.

Lewis B. Smedes

I don't remember my childhood very well at all, but my earliest memory is holding a man's hand as I was walking down the street at about 1??. I can still remember the shoes I was wearing, but I don't know who the man was or what the memory relates to.

Naomie Harris

Memory is the miser of the mind; forgetfulness the spendthrift.

Robert Green Ingersoll

Wisdom is founded on memory; happiness on forgetfulness.

Mason Cooley

Memory is a political act. Forgetfulness is the handmaiden of tyranny.

James Carroll

Few have wished for memory so much as they have longed for forgetfulness.

Arthur Helps

Memory embellishes Life. Forgetfulness makes it possible.

Romare Bearden

Memory only becomes interesting through its struggle with forgetfulness.

Adrian Forty

A dying man needs to die, as a sleepy man needs to sleep, and there comes a time when it is wrong, as well as useless, to resist.

Stewart Alsop

The invention of writing will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it, because they will not practice their memory. Their trust in writing, produced by external characters which are no part of themselves, will discourage the use of their own memory within them. You have invented an elixir not of memory, but of reminding; and you offer your pupils the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom.

Socrates

The content of the dialogue with 'the Other' is a content that indicates that man's horizons are infinitely bright, that death is in fact, well, as Thomas Vaughn put it, 'the body is the placenta of the soul'

Terence McKenna

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