Memories quotes

“The memory of a good deed lives.”

A worthwhile action can leave a durable impression after the action itself has passed, much as fragrance remains in an emptied vessel.

Source note: Moral printed after “The Old Woman and the Wine-Jar” in the Townsend translation.

“Because true mothers never forget their children”

The compact line expresses Mrs Jo’s conviction that maternal attachment persists despite separation, distance and a troubled family history.

Source note: Jo's Boys, Chapter 4, Project Gutenberg #3499. Spoken by Mrs Jo while urging Dan to remember his mother; it reflects fictional dialogue and Alcott's narrative world.

“There seems a magic in the very name of Christmas.”

Dickens treats Christmas as a socially charged name that can awaken affectionate memory, reconciliation and family feeling before any particular celebration or gift is described.

Source note: Sketches by Boz, “Characters,” Chapter II, “A Christmas Dinner,” Project Gutenberg #882. The sentence introduces a passage about family gatherings, forgotten quarrels and renewed social feeling; it is narrator prose, not dialogue by a fictional character.

“We will teach our little child to love and honour you”

Florence imagines family memory being deliberately carried forward, with a child taught affection and respect for the grandfather from whom she had been estranged.

Source note: Dombey and Son, Chapter 59, Project Gutenberg #821. Florence speaks to Mr Dombey about how she and Walter will raise their child.

“It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backwards.”

The White Queen treats remembering the future as perfectly ordinary, producing humor by applying confident logic to an impossible premise.

Source note: Through the Looking-Glass, Chapter 5; the White Queen explains the supposed advantage of living backwards.

“Unable are the loved to die — For Love is Immortality —”

The poem treats love as a form of continuity that resists the finality of physical death.

Source note: Opening lines.

“Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure.”

The advice does not erase the past; it questions repeated attention to memories that no longer help the present.

Source note: Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 58.

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

Remembering earlier failures matters because retained experience can change later judgment instead of allowing the same pattern to recur unnoticed.

Source note: The Life of Reason, Reason in Common Sense; Santayana connects memory with the possibility of genuine progress.

“You did not come, And marching Time drew on, and wore me numb.”

Absence becomes more painful as time continues, with the missed meeting represented not as a single moment but as a prolonged experience of disappointed expectation.

Source note: “A Broken Appointment,” Poems of the Past and the Present (1901), Project Gutenberg #3168. The poem's speaker addresses an absent person; the line is retained as dramatic lyric context.

“Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness.”

Change by itself is not improvement; progress requires preserving useful lessons and achievements while moving beyond what no longer works.

Source note: The Life of Reason, Reason in Common Sense; the sentence follows Santayana’s discussion of memory and historical learning.

“there falls along with him a whole wing of the palace of our life.”

The death of a close friend is pictured as structural loss inside the survivor’s own life because shared memory, recognition and companionship disappear with that person.

Source note: Memories and Portraits; Project Gutenberg #381. The surrounding passage describes friendship, mortality and memory; the architectural metaphor is kept as grief writing rather than literal psychology.

“Remember me when I am gone away, Gone far away into the silent land.”

The opening request names anticipated separation directly, making remembrance part of how love is imagined continuing after the speaker is gone.

Source note: “Remember,” first published in Goblin Market and Other Poems (1862); Project Gutenberg #16950. The sonnet later softens this request by allowing compassionate forgetting rather than demanding perpetual grief.

“The gap of time since I had seen him last had made no impression on me”

Jefferies describes memory resisting elapsed time: the remembered person remains vivid even though years have passed and death has created an irreversible break in the present.

Source note: Field and Hedgerow; Project Gutenberg #7030. The sentence occurs in a recollection of John Brown after his death and is kept in that personal-memory context rather than generalized into abstract grief advice.

“How great my grief, my joys how few, Since first it was my fate to know thee!”

The speaker measures a relationship by the imbalance between grief and joy, making recollection itself the structure through which attachment and loss are assessed.

Source note: “How Great My Grief,” Poems of the Past and the Present (1901), Project Gutenberg #3168. It is a dramatic lyric statement and is not automatically read as direct autobiography.

“those who have done the most for you, those who have stood by you most closely.”

The phrase directs attention toward the people whose sustained presence and help deserve to be remembered when evaluating one’s own conduct.

Source note: Character Building, “Have You Done Your Best?”, Project Gutenberg #60484. Washington is asking students to imagine answering to parents or their nearest and dearest friends.

“Better by far you should forget and smile Than that you should remember and be sad.”

Love is expressed through releasing the other person from an obligation to grieve, placing their future well-being above continued remembrance.

Source note: Closing thought of Remember; Rossetti shifts from asking to be remembered toward permitting compassionate forgetting.

“Never forget that she risked everything for your sake, and don't let it be in vain.”

Remembering a parent’s sacrifice becomes an ethical obligation: Dan is asked to let that costly act influence the kind of life he chooses afterward.

Source note: Jo's Boys, Chapter 4, Project Gutenberg #3499. Mrs Jo is speaking to Dan about his mother's effort to protect him from harmful influences.

“those who are near and dear to you, those who have done more for you than anybody else”

The address explicitly centers people who have given sustained help, making awareness of that support part of the motivation for continued growth.

Source note: Character Building, “Growth,” Project Gutenberg #60484. Washington uses the phrase while urging students to make the coming year their best.

“Other desires and other hopes beset me, Hopes which obscure, but cannot do thee wrong!”

New desires and hopes can enter life without necessarily betraying the person who is remembered, allowing continuation and fidelity to coexist.

Source note: “Remembrance,” Project Gutenberg #1019. The speaker is negotiating loyalty to a lost beloved rather than announcing a universal timetable for moving on.

“Blessings emblazoned that day Everything glowed with a gleam; Yet we were looking away!”

Looking backward reveals value that was not fully noticed while the moment was being lived, giving the remembered family scene both warmth and regret.

Source note: “The Self-Unseeing,” Project Gutenberg #3168. The exclamation closes a poem of retrospective domestic memory and should not be detached from that remembered household scene.

“Faithful, indeed, is the spirit that remembers After such years of change and suffering!”

Remembering after long change and suffering is presented as a form of fidelity, showing that grief can alter across time without making the earlier bond unreal.

Source note: “Remembrance,” Project Gutenberg #1019. The poem’s speaker is reflecting on a long-dead beloved within a literary lyric.

“The bustle in a house The morning after death Is solemnest of industries Enacted upon earth.”

Ordinary household activity after a death is portrayed as solemn work, emphasizing the practical tasks that continue while grief has only just begun.

Source note: Poem in Poems: First Series (1890), Project Gutenberg #12242. “The Bustle in a House” is used as an editorial first-line source identifier; the poem continues from physical tasks toward putting love away for eternity.

“Flower-petals flee; But, since it once hath been, No more that severing scene Can harrow me.”

Falling petals accompany a recognition that a severing event belongs to the past and cannot happen for the first time again, joining natural recurrence to changed grief.

Source note: “De Profundis I,” Project Gutenberg #3168. The passage belongs to one speaker's reflection on bereavement and seasonal return.

“Cold in the earth—and fifteen wild Decembers, From those brown hills, have melted into spring.”

The poem measures bereavement through fifteen winters turning into spring, making seasonal change a visible clock for grief that has lasted across years.

Source note: “Remembrance,” in Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell (1846); Project Gutenberg #1019. The line belongs to a dramatic lyric voice and is not biographical evidence by itself.

“such home-comings keep hearts tender and hands helpful with the memories of young and happy days.”

Returning to a formative home can renew affection and willingness to help because shared memories continue to bind people after their lives have scattered.

Source note: Jo's Boys, Chapter 1, Project Gutenberg #3499. Narrator commentary about former Plumfield pupils returning as adults; it is not Alcott autobiography.

“Smell is a potent wizard that transports us across a thousand miles and all the years we have lived.”

A sensory cue can collapse distance and time, showing how memory is often recovered through concrete impressions rather than deliberate analysis alone.

Source note: The World I Live In, discussion of smell; Keller reflects on the power of scent to restore places, seasons, and earlier experiences.

“My life closed twice before its close; It yet remains to see If Immortality unveil A third event to me.”

The speaker treats profound separations as deaths within a still-living life, leaving the final meaning of another separation to the poem's religious-metaphysical horizon.

Source note: “Parting,” Poems: Third Series (1896), Project Gutenberg #12242. The poem is lyric and metaphysical; its language of immortality is not presented as empirical evidence about an afterlife.

“I never lost as much but twice, And that was in the sod; Twice have I stood a beggar Before the door of God!”

Two deaths are remembered as losses so severe that the speaker figures herself as spiritually impoverished and dependent before God.

Source note: Poem in Poems: First Series (1890), represented by its opening line for source disambiguation; Project Gutenberg #12242. Its theological language belongs to the lyric speaker.

“Snow-bound in woodland, a mournful word, Dropt now and then from the bill of a bird, Reached me on wind-wafts.”

A winter bird-call reaches the speaker inside a snowbound wood, giving a postponed meeting an atmosphere of distance, waiting and subdued natural sound.

Source note: “Postponement,” collected in Wessex Poems and Other Verses (1898), Project Gutenberg #3167. The poem's landscape frames a delayed relationship encounter and is not generic weather description.

“My mother gave it to me; and when you read it try to believe that neither of your mothers will ever forget you.”

A book passed from one mother to another generation becomes a symbol of continuing care, linking memory, reading and the idea of maternal presence across absence.

Source note: Jo's Boys, Chapter 4, Project Gutenberg #3499. Mrs Jo gives Dan a book that came from her own mother and speaks of both maternal bonds.

“Here is the ancient floor, Footworn and hollowed and thin, Here was the former door Where the dead feet walked in.”

A familiar interior is revisited through traces of people who have died, turning worn architecture into a physical prompt for family memory and loss.

Source note: “The Self-Unseeing,” Poems of the Past and the Present (1901), Project Gutenberg #3168. The poem reconstructs a remembered domestic scene; its dead belong to that literary memory.

“Her father had always defended and excused her, and her loving remembrance of his tenderness was a force within her”

Remembered parental tenderness becomes a source of endurance for Maggie when her father is vulnerable, showing how earlier care continues to shape later loyalty.

Source note: The Mill on the Floss, Book III, Project Gutenberg #6688. Narrator commentary on Maggie beside her father after the family's collapse.

“We stood by a pond that winter day, And the sun was white, as though chidden of God, And a few leaves lay on the starving sod.”

A drained winter landscape mirrors the emotional coldness of a failing relationship, with pale sun, dead leaves and barren ground shaping the poem's remembered scene.

Source note: “Neutral Tones,” collected in Wessex Poems and Other Verses (1898), Project Gutenberg #3167. Hardy's landscape is part of a dramatic lyric memory, not a claim that winter inherently causes sadness.

“But winter kills the orange-buds, The gardens in the frost are, And all the heart dissolves in floods, Remembering we have lost her.”

Winter garden imagery gives the family’s bereavement a seasonal landscape, joining visible frost to the emotional force of remembering the child.

Source note: “A Child’s Grave at Florence,” stanza XV; Project Gutenberg #31015. The natural image belongs to an elegy for a specific child rather than a general theory of grief.

“When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.”

Grief is connected to former delight: the pain of loss can reveal how much value, affection, or meaning the lost relationship once carried.

Source note: The Prophet, “On Joy and Sorrow.”

“Then, as horizons step, Or noons report away, Without the formula of sound, It passes, and we stay: A quality of loss Affecting our content.”

The passing spring light becomes a subtle experience of loss, showing how seasonal change can alter contentment even when nothing dramatic announces the transition.

Source note: “A Light Exists in Spring,” Poems: Third Series; Project Gutenberg #12242. The passage belongs to an early edited edition whose punctuation and poem headings differ from modern critical texts.

“Since then, keen lessons that love deceives, And wrings with wrong, have shaped to me Your face, and the God-curst sun, and a tree, And a pond edged with grayish leaves.”

The speaker remembers a painful relationship through the landscape that surrounded it, showing how later experience can fuse emotional lessons with particular natural images.

Source note: “Neutral Tones,” Wessex Poems and Other Verses; Project Gutenberg #3167. The statement belongs to the poem's speaker and should not be treated as Hardy's universal doctrine that love deceives.