Sara Teasdale Quotes

Ah, tell me not that memory sheds gladness o'er the past, what is recalled by faded flowers, save that they did not last?

It is sadder to find the past again and find it inadequate to the present than it is to have it elude you and remain forever a harmonious conception of memory.

And her life will perhaps be the richer, for holding now within it the memory of what came, but could not stay.

How those fires burned that are no longer, how the weather worsened, how the shadow of the seagull vanished without a trace. Was it the end of a season, the end of a life? Was it so long ago it seems it might never have been? What is it in us that lives in the past and longs for the future, or lives in the future and longs for the past? (from "No Words Can Describe It")

The years as they pass plunder us of one thing after another.

You can't go home again because home has ceased to exist except in the mothballs of memory.

This is the time to remember cause it will not last forever. These are the days to hold onto cause we won't although we'll want to.

Don't think about what you've left behind. If what one finds is made of pure matter, it will never spoil. And one can always come back. If what you had found was only a moment of light, like the explosion of a star, you would find nothing on your return.

There is nothing steadfast in life but our memories. We are sure of keeping intact only that which we have lost.

Everywhere we go and move on and change, something's lost--something's left behind. You can't ever quite repeat anything, and I've been so yours, here--

I saw that nothing was permanent. You don't want to possess anything that is dear to you because you might lose it.

No man can lose what he never had.

I long for the time of no more departures. It has something to do with age, probably.

But where are the snows of yester year?

To feel today what one felt yesterday isn't to feel - it's to remember today what was felt yesterday, to be today's living corpse of what yesterday was lived and lost.

The good times of today, are the sad thoughts of tomorrow.

How little remains of the man I once was, save the memory of him! But remembering is only a new form of suffering.

Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.

No one wants life to end. It was bad enough when my last tour came to an end.

Time, you old gypsy man, will you not stay, put up your caravan just for one day?

The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

Going home is not necessarily a wonderful experience. It always comes with a sense of loss and makes you so conscious of the inexorable passage of time.

I only felt a cold wind blow while I tried to hang on to the past.

You can always come back, but you can't come back all the way.

The world changes too fast. You take your eyes off something that's always been there, and the next minute it's just a memory.