Just Forget It

Sunday, February 21, 2021 – Just Forget It

The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting. ~ Milan Kundera

Yes, suddenly I saw it clearly: most people deceive themselves with a pair of faiths: they believe in eternal memory (of people, things, deeds, nations) and in redressibility (of deeds, mistakes, sins, wrongs). Both are false faiths. In reality the opposite is true: everything will be forgotten and nothing will be redressed. The task of obtaining redress (by vengeance or by forgiveness) will be taken over by forgetting. No one will redress the wrongs that have been done, but all wrongs will be forgotten. ~ Milan Kundera, The Joke

Without forgetting it is quite impossible to live at all. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

The existence of forgetting has never been proved: we only know that some things do not come to our mind when we want them to. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

All things one has forgotten scream for help in dreams. ~ Elias Canetti

God and I both knew what it meant once; now God alone knows. ~ Friedrich Klopstock

Through memory we travel against time, through forgetfulness we follow its course. ~ Joseph Joubert

Space, like time, engenders forgetfulness; but it does so by setting us bodily free from our surroundings and giving us back our primitive, unattached state. ~ Thomas Mann

Forget and forgive. This is not difficult when properly understood. It means forget inconvenient duties, then forgive yourself for forgetting. By rigid practice and stern determination, it comes easy. ~ Mark Twain

To confer dignity, forgive. To express contempt, forget. ~ Mason Cooley

A memory is what is left when something happens and does not completely unhappen. ~ Edward de Bono

Love is so short, forgetting is so long. ~ Pablo Neruda

Every man’s memory is his private literature. ~ Aldous Huxley

Man is a messenger who forgot the message. ~ Abraham Joshua Heschel

People change and forget to tell each other. ~ Lillian Hellman

When suffering comes, we yearn for some sign from God, forgetting we have just had one. ~ Mignon McLaughlin

Nobody is forgotten when it is convenient to remember him. ~ Benjamin Disraeli

Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names. ~ John F. Kennedy

The honest poor can sometimes forget poverty. The honest rich can never forget it. ~ Gilbert K. Chesterton

I never deny. I never contradict. I sometimes forget. ~ Benjamin Disraeli

A friend who cannot at a pinch remember a thing or two that never happened is as bad as one who does not know how to forget. ~ Samuel Butler

Did you ever stop to think, and forget to start again? ~ A. A. Milne

There are three side effects of acid: enhanced long-term memory, decreased short-term memory, and I forget the third. ~ Timothy Leary

It is sometimes expedient to forget what you know. [Etiam oblivisci quod scis interdum expedit.] ~ Syrus (Publilius Syrus)

To forget is the great secret of strong creative natures; to forget is the way nature herself who knows no past and who at every hour begins the mysteries of her untiring labors afresh. ~ Honore de Balzac

Every composer knows the anguish and despair occasioned by forgetting ideas which one had no time to write down. ~ Hector Berlioz

Diligent as one must be in learning, one must be as diligent in forgetting; otherwise the process is one of pedantry, not culture. ~ Albert J. Nock

If you don’t want a man unhappy politically, don’t give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none. Let him forget there is such a thing as war. If the government is inefficient, top-heavy, and tax-mad, better it be all those than that people worry over it. Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs or the names of state capitals or how much corn Iowa grew last year. Cram them full of noncombustible data, chock them so damned full of ‘facts’ they feel stuffed, but absolutely ‘brilliant’ with information. Then they’ll feel they’re thinking, they’ll get a sense of motion without moving. And they’ll be happy, because facts of that sort don’t change. ~ Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

I’ve a grand memory for forgetting. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

Isn’t elegance forgetting what one is wearing? ~ Yves Saint Laurent

Originality is the fine art of remembering what you hear but forgetting where you heard it. ~ Laurence J. Peter

We are weighed down, every moment, by the conception and the sensation of Time. And there are but two means of escaping and forgetting this nightmare: pleasure and work. Pleasure consumes us. Work strengthens us. Let us choose. ~ Charles Baudelaire

There is nothing new except what has been forgotten. ~ Marie Antoinette

In ancient times cats were worshipped as gods; they have not forgotten this. ~ Terry Pratchett

Part of the function of memory is to forget; the omni-retentive mind will break down and produce at best an idiot savant who can recite a telephone book, and at worst a person to whom every grudge and slight is as yesterday’s. ~ Christopher Hitchens

During the 1960s, I think, people forgot what emotions were supposed to be. And I don’t think they’ve ever remembered. ~ Andy Warhol

Experience is what you have after you’ve forgotten her name. ~ Milton Berle

I drink to forget I drink. ~ Joe E. Lewis

You’ve got to learn your instrument. Then, you practice, practice, practice. And then, when you finally get up there on the bandstand, forget all that and just wail. ~ Charlie Parker