Ali Smith Quotes

It would add much to human happiness, if an art could be taught of forgetting all of which the remembrance is at once useless and afflictive, that the mind might perform its functions without encumbrance, and the past might no longer encroach upon the present.

A retentive memory may be a good thing, but the ability to forget is the true token of greatness.

Things pass, and the best we can do is to let them really go away. Getting rid of certain memories also means making some room for other memories to take their place.

More important than learning how to recall things is finding ways to forget things that are cluttering the mind.

It's easy to forget things you don't need anymore.

I don't live in the past at all; I'm always wanting to do something new. I make a point of constantly trying to forget and get things out of my mind.

Forget whatever should be forgotten, so that you can remember what should be remembered

Anyone that knows me knows that I get over things quickly and usually forget about it as well. Sometimes a good thing, sometimes not so much.

I always preach you have to have a short memory, whether it is good or bad.

Sometimes things are better off forgotten.

If you want something new in your life, you have to make space for it. I mean that psychologically as well as physically. Take a look at your closet. If you have the kind of closet where you can't fit another thing in there, that might be the reason you don't have more new clothes. If you want a new man in your life, you've got to let go of the one who stopped dating you five years ago. In other words, you need to complete the past in order for the present to show up more fully.

How could you cleanse yourself if you couldn’t forget?

I do not want to heap coals of fire on anyone's head, but I would like to advise those who keep the living thought of the dead hidden away in cardboard boxes, to pass on as quickly as possibly such explosive material, whose only legitimate heir is the whole world, that is to say, my neighbor.

Don´t be unnecessarily burdened by the past. Go on closing the chapters that you have read; there is no need to go back again and again.

It's nice to be able to forget.

Forgetting is the great secret of strong and creative lives.

Sooner or later we've all got to let go of our past.

One of life's minor satisfactions is forgetting.

Let old ones go. Dont be a memory-monger! Once you were young──now you are even younger.

It was too much work to remember things you might not have again, and so one by one they opened up their hands and let them go.

Well, just remember--all your misery will be waiting for you at the door upon your exit, should you care to pick it up again when you leave.

We forgive and forget. At least I forgive and he forgets.

Lay silently the injuries you receive upon the altar of oblivion.

I shall revenge myself in the cruelest way you can imagine. I shall forget it.