Forgetting Quotes

“Three hundred years, and some part of her is still afraid of forgetting. There have been times, of course, when she wished her memory more fickle, when she would have given anything to welcome madness, and disappear. It is the kinder road, to lose yourself.
Like Peter, in J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan.
There, at the end, when Peter sits on the rock, the memory of Wendy Darling sliding from his mind, and it is sad, of course, to forget.
But it is a lonely thing, to be forgotten.
To remember when no one else does.”
― V.E. Schwab, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

“Perhaps you have forgotten. That’s one of the great problems of our modern world, you know. Forgetting. The victim never forgets. Ask an Irishman what the English did to him in 1920 and he’ll tell you the day of the month and the time and the name of every man they killed. Ask an Iranian what the English did to him in 1953 and he’ll tell you. His child will tell you. His grandchild will tell you. And when he has one, his great-grandchild will tell you too. But ask an Englishman—” He flung up his hands in mock ignorance. “If he ever knew, he has forgotten. ‘Move on!’ you tell us. ‘Move on! Forget what we’ve done to you. Tomorrow’s another day!’ But it isn’t, Mr. Brue.” He still had Brue’s hand. “Tomorrow was created yesterday, you see. That is the point I was making to you. And by the day before yesterday, too. To ignore history is to ignore the wolf at the door.”
― John le Carré, A Most Wanted Man

“Forget the suffering
You caused others.
Forget the suffering
Others caused you.
The waters run and run,
Springs sparkle and are done,
You walk the earth you are forgetting.”
― Czeslaw Milosz

“Indians think it is important to remember, while Americans believe it is important to forget.”
― Paula Gunn Allen

“We can forgive but we can’t forget. Whoever says otherwise hasn’t known true pain. Hear me out. Hearts are muscles, and muscles have memory. So, of course our hearts can’t forget. They remember what hurts them. They remember so they can grow stronger. I think that’s why we must remember. If we forgot the moment we forgave, we wouldn’t receive the strength that comes from hurting. And something good must come from all the bad. Something. Anything. Even the faintest good.”
― Caroline George, Dearest Josephine

“MIDNIGHTS

Don't remember many midnights.
Forgotten some of my best insights.
Can't recall some of the highest heights.
But I've memorized you.

Don't remember many daybreaks.
How many sunrises have come as I lay awake.
Don't dwell on my worst mistakes.
But I always think of you”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, Daisy Jones & The Six

“Be deaf! You do not need to hear or, hearing, you do not need to remember. How soothing it is to forget. And how dangerous”
― Frank Herbert, God Emperor of Dune

“You like to think memory goes far back though remembering was never recommended. Forget all that, the world says. The world's had a lot of practice.”
― Claudia Rankine, Citizen: An American Lyric

“How I wish I could leave

or forget all my dead.”
― Kevin Young, Book of Hours: Poems

“Forgetting is one of the most beneficial processes we possess.”
― Nick Payne, Elegy

“Iraq has been forgotten. Even worse, or perhaps precisely because of this forgetting, many new Iraqs have been destroyed and added to the imperial list of oppression and domination since 2003. But, how can Iraq be forgotten? Isn’t forgetting it precisely the reason why many other Iraqs are being created around us without having enough people take notice? Are there still some naïve people out there who believe that what happened there will not happen here, albeit in a different shape or form? Are there any naïve people who believe that humanity can go on surviving with this brutal war machine? Are there still naïve people who divide our planet into 'here' and 'there'?”
― Louis Yako

“How am I supposed to forget that holding him feels like touching love itself?”
― Sherry Namdeo

“It's better to forget a home than to lose it,”
― A. Deborah Baker, Over the Woodward Wall

“Under this pine tree I let you down and you let me down. Under this tree, you betrayed me and I betrayed you. Right here, I forgot you and you forgot me. Under this pine that they call 'evergreen' we both discovered that nothing lasts forever.”
― Louis Yako, أنا زهرة برية [I am a Wildflower]

“Tell me all the things I'm going to forget."
"With every person it's different."
"Will I forget to love you?"
"I hope not."
"Don't let me forget to love you.”
― Joshua Henkin, Morningside Heights

“Love. This was the way not to fall into forgetting. Love, and a good publicist.”
― Jonathan Lee, The Great Mistake

“Will the same day ever come back, and with it Our amazement at having been in it, or will only a dark haze Spread at the back of the mind, erasing events, one after The other, so brief they may have been lost to begin with?”
― Mark Strand, Blizzard of One

“In the practical use of our intellect, forgetting is as important a function as recollecting.”
― William James, The Principles of Psychology, Volume 1

“Tu avais commencé sous l'égide de Miranda à écrire des éloges du présent mais maintenant, son présent s'était rétréci jusqu'à n'être qu'un minuscule point de lumière, les ténèbres alentours te confondaient.”
― Nancy Huston, Cantique des plaines

“I couldn't under stand anything I saw in the picture at all. How could the players care, after the way they had humiliated themselves (and, of course, me) seven days - seven days - before? Why would any fan who had suffered at Wembley the way I had suffered stand up to cheer a nothing goal in a nothing match? I used to stare at this photo for minutes at a time, trying to detect somewhere within it any evidence of the trauma of the previous week, some hint of grief or of mourning, but there was none: apparently everyone had forgotten except me.”
― Nick Hornby, Fever Pitch

“I kept on hoping while the world forgot our love.”
― Laura Chouette

“I want to be close to the stars
- falling in love with the moon;
while forgetting of being a part
of the sky who keeps it all alive.”
― Laura Chouette

“What people don't understand they just push away to the far corners of their minds and eventually it fades away and gets forgotten. 'Cause it's safer that way.”
― Raymond Khoury, The Sign

“The greatest loss of 9/11 is that many forgot to remember what really matters- the oneness of humanity.”
― Amelia Rose

“Between the forgetting that takes place as a result of our consent, which is a forgetting we need in order to reconcile our pasts and presents, and the forgetting that is imposed on us against our own will, which is so often a way of forcing us to accept a present in which we do not want to partake.”
― Anuk Arudpragasam, A Passage North

“...it is no great task to remember people--the challenge is in forgetting them and allowing one's self to -go on-.

[Édouard Manet]”
― Maureen Gibbon, The Lost Notebook of Édouard Manet

“Per liquidare i popoli (..) si comincia col privarli della memoria. Si distruggono i loro libri, la loro cultura, la loro storia. E qualcun altro scrive loro altri libri, li fornisce di un'altra cultura, inventa per loro un'altra Storia. Dopo di che il popolo comincia lentamente a dimenticare quello che è e quello che è stato. E il mondo attorno a lui lo dimentica ancora più in fretta”
― Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting

“A theory on why we stop remembering: there is a part of our story that we do not know how to tell to ourselves and we will away its existence for so long that finally our brain agrees to a trade: I will let you forget this, but you will never feel whole.”
― Laura van den Berg, Find Me

“It was strange to wonder what she had really forgotten.”
― Marilynne Robinson, Lila

“Vivid are memories
We most wish to forget”
― Nanette L. Avery