Marguerite Gardiner Quotes

The past was but the cemetery of our illusions: one simply stubbed one's toes on the gravestones.

So we don't believe that life is beautiful because we don't recall it but if we get a whiff of a long-forgotten smell we are suddenly intoxicated and similarly we think we no longer love the dead because we don't remember them but if by chance we come across an old glove we burst into tears.

It becomes increasingly easy, as you get older, to drown in nostalgia.

Oh all the times I've listened, and all the times I've heard All the melodies I'm missing, and all the magic words, And all those potent voices, and the choices we had then, How I'd love to find we had that kind of choice again.

Perhaps - I want the old days back again and they'll never come back, and I am haunted by the memory of them and of the world falling about my ears.

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

Whiles in the early Winter eve We pass amid the gathering night Some homestead that we had to leave Years past; and see its candles bright Shine in the room beside the door Where we were merry years agone But now must never enter more, As still the dark road drives us on. E'en so the world of men may turn At even of some hurried day And see the ancient glimmer burn Across the waste that hath no way; Then with that faint light in its eyes A while I bid it linger near And nurse in wavering memories The bitter-sweet of days that were.

I was assailed by memories of a life that wasn't mine anymore, but one in which I'd found the simplest and most lasting joys.

Things always seem fairer when we look back at them, and it is out of that inaccessible tower of the past that Longing leans and beckons.

There is a general place in your brain, I think, reserved for melancholy of relationships past. It grows and prospers as life progresses, forcing you finally, against your better judgment, to listen to country music.

Memories begin to creep forward from hidden corners of your mind. Passing disappointments. Lost chances and lost causes. Heartbreaks and pain and desolate, horrible loneliness. Sorrows you thought long forgotten mingle with still-fresh wounds.

Every time I open the drawer, it's a trip down Memory Lane, which, if you don't turn off at the right exit, merges straight into the Masochistic Nostalgia Highway.

So many memories and so little worth remembering, and in front of me - a long, long road without a goal.

That night I looked up at those same stars, but I didn't want any of those things. I didn't want Egypt, or France, or far-flung destinations. I just wanted to go back to my life from my childhood, just to visit it, and touch it, and to convince myself that yes, it had been real.

Our best yesterdays are now foul piles of crumpled names.

... we chase after ghosts and spirits and are left holding only memories and dreams. It's not that we want what we can't have; it's that we've held all we could want and then had to watch it slip away.

Memory is not what the heart desires.

The faintest gleam of their lost memories glimmered for the briefest moment in their hearts.

You were everything, everything that I wanted. We were meant to be, supposed to be, but we lost it. And all of the memories, so close to me, just fade away. All this time you were pretending. So much for my happy ending.

It's regrets that make painful memories. When I was crazy I did everything just right.

I came to the place of my birth and cried: "The friends of my youth, where are they?"--and an echo answered, "Where are they?

Sometimes it's better not to look back.

I would trade all my tomorrow's for one single yesterday.

Strangely enough, this is the past that somebody in the future is longing to go back to.

A long past vividly remembered is like a heavy garment that clings to your limbs when you would run.