Memories Past
Been there, done that: Ever have the feeling that you’ve . . .
· learned this stuff before: deja knew
· waited in this line before: deja queue
· eaten this dinner before: deja stew
· forgotten this name before: deja who
· been on this airplane before: deja flew
· fed these pigeons before: deja coo
· felt this ill before: deja flu
· sheared this sheep before: deja ewe
· sat through this sermon before: deja pew. (Rocky Mountain News)
He who believes that the past cannot be changed has not yet written his memoirs. (Torvald Gahlin)
To bring in a memory process is to be there and to experience it. (Dr. Paul Brenner)
As Dennis looks through a photo book of his parents, he says to his friend: “This brings back memories I never had.” (Hank Ketcham, in Dennis the Menace comic strip)
You can clutch the past so tightly to your chest that it leaves your arms too full to embrace the present. (Jan Glidewell)
A country without a memory is a country of madmen. (George Santayana)
Anxiety interferes with memory, that’s known. Some psychopaths suffer little, if any, anxiety. Medical mentalists say that’s probably why certain criminals without consciences remember all sorts of lifetime details others tend to forget. (L. M. Boyd)
Though the past haunts me as a spirit, I do not ask to forget. (Felicia Dorothea Browne Hemans)
While visiting with a friend over coffee one morning, a young woman complained, “Every time my husband and I get into an argument, he gets historical!” The friend interrupted, “Don’t you mean hysterical?” “No, I mean historical,” the lady replied. “He always brings up the past.” (Glenn Van Ekeren, in The Speaker’s Sourcebook, p. 161)
The great arrogance of the present is to forget the intelligence of the past. (Ken Burns, filmmaker)
When a man says he has a clear conscience, it often means he has a bad memory. Never let yesterday use up too much of today. What we learn from the past is that we seldom learn from the past. (Bits & Pieces)
I tend to live in the past because most of my life is there. (Herb Caen)
A THOUGHT TO REMEMBER: Living in the past is lots of fun . . . besides, it’s cheaper. (Reminisce magazine)
The longer you can look back, the farther you can look forward. (Winston Churchill)
There is a way to look at the past. Don’t hide from it. It will not catch you if you don’t repeat it. (Pearl Bailey, singer/actress)
It is related in Genesis that when fleeing from the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, which God was destroying, Lot’s wife looked back, and “became a pillar of salt.” Salt is a preservative, corresponding to memory. When we remember the pleasures of the senses and long for their return, we preserve or “salt” the sense desire. This desire will manifest somewhere, sometime, unless the memory is dissolved through renunciation. (Charles Fillmore, in The Twelve Powers of Man, p. 146)
Everyone needs his memories. They keep the wolf of insignificance from the door. (Saul Bellow, in Mr. Sammler’s Planet)
My Favorite Saying: “May you never forget what is worth remembering or remember what is best to forget.” (Rose Kniser, in Reminisce magazine)
Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be. (Peter De Vries, American author)
Nostalgia is like a grammar lesson. You find the present tense and the past perfect. (Orben’s Comedy Fillers)
Nostalgia is heroin for old people. (Dara O’Briain, BBC host)
The pain in the neck you complain about may be the result of looking backward. (H. F. Henrichs, in Sunshine Magazine)
There is no perception that is not full of memories. (Henri Bergson)
Everyone has a photographic memory; some just don’t have film.
(Steven Wright, comedian)
Several studies are coming to the same conclusion about how to preserve memory as people age: Choices made about eating, smoking and exercise during youth and middle age can affect memory later. Dr. Lissy Jarvik, a psychiatrist and specialist in the aging mind at UCLA, studied 134 sets of elderly twins. Those with the healthiest lifestyles tended also to have the best memories. Researchers at West Virginia University found that physically fit senior citizens were better drivers than those in bad shape. (Denver Rocky Mountain News)
Recollection is the only paradise from which we cannot be turned out. (Jean Paul Richter)
No man is rich enough to buy back his past. (Oscar Wilde)
Be not the slave of your own past. Plunge into the sublime seas, dive deep and swim far, so you shall come back with self-respect, with new power, with an advanced experience that shall explain and overlook the old. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
I’ve got “Sometimers.” Sometimes I remember and sometimes I forget. (Spike Lee, in Newsweek)
When we look at the farthest visible star we are looking 4 billion years into the past -- the light from that star traveling at 186,000 miles a second, has taken that many years to reach us. (David Louis, in Fascinating Facts)
A good storyteller is a person who has a good memory and hopes other people haven’t. (Irvin S. Cobb, humorist)
I have taught first grade for more than 20 years. Often, when I’m out running errands, I see former students. I am amazed at the incidents they remember from their first-grade years. Most of the time, they remember simple things: “You used to let us dance on Friday afternoons,” said one professional musician. “I remember you used to help me with my zipper,” said one student completing graduate work in engineering. One student, however, did remember a “big thing.” When she introduced me to her boyfriend, she said, “This is Mrs. Montoya. She taught me to read.” As I watched her walk away, I thought, “What a wonderful career this has been. Amen!” (Irene Montoya, in Catholic Digest)
When a soul is encouraged to develop the mental faculties and to open the heart to a great feeling of love for humanity, it just naturally opens up the subconscious door that allows it to peer into the past. For before we are entirely free from the shortcomings and the ignorance of the race mind, we must awaken to the fact that these things exist and that we are connected with them, until through the Jesus Christ Mind we swing clear of them and establish ourselves in a consciousness of life and freedom and love. (Myrtle Fillmore’s Healing Letters, p. 78)
Will you buy the contention that the telescope is a sort of time machine? Because you do indeed look back in time when you look at light images from outer space. Long ago sent, just now seen. (L. M. Boyd)
Things ain’t what they used to be and probably never was. (Will Rogers)
When we look out into the universe on a clear night, we are faced with a strange phenomenon. We are standing on the earth in this present moment, but we are viewing the universe in its past. Light travels at over 186,000 miles a second, so when we view the stars and galaxies “out there,” we are seeing them as they were in the distant past. Even the sun, which is relatively close, is not how we see it in space, because it takes the sun’s light over eight minutes to reach us. We see it how it was eight minutes ago. (Eric Butterworth, in Unity magazine)
The popularity of video cameras arises from a simple misunderstanding. Somehow people have the idea that they won’t mind being old if they can turn on the TV and see what they were like when they were young. This is not true. The best memories are ones that have been allowed to evolve unhindered by documentary proof. I often cheer myself up by thinking back on my days as a football star. These recollections would be less thrilling if they were accompanied by a video showing that I weighed 80 pounds and spent most of my time on the bench. Memory is better than a video, because it’s free and it doesn’t work very well. (David Owen, in Atlantic Monthly)
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