Jean Ingelow Quotes

There is no greater sorrow Than to be mindful of the happy time In misery

How important things had become, now that they were gone! I felt a sudden panic that I would soon forget everything.

They say that Hope is happiness But genuine Love must prize the past; And Mem'ry wakes the thoughts that bless: They rose first -- they set the last. And all that mem'ry loves the most Was once our only hope to be: And all that hope adored and lost Hath melted into memory. Alas! It is delusion all-- The future cheats us from afar: Nor can we be what we recall, Nor dare we think on what we are.

But that was the best time of my life, and only now that it has gone from me forever -- only now do I realize it.

Night is the time to weep,To wet with unseen tearsThose graves of memory where sleepThe joys of other years.

Memory is the sense of loss, and loss pulls us after it.

I wondered if there would ever be a day when I didn't think about Alaska, wondered whether I should hope for a time when she would be a distant memory - recalled only on the anniversary of her death, or maybe a couple of weeks after, remembering only after having forgotten.

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.

And, hungry for the old, familiar ways, I turned aside and bowed my head and wept.

It shocks me how I wish for...what is lost and cannot come back.

And as we live our lives we discover - drawing toward us the thin threads attached to each - what has been lost. I closed my eyes and tried to bring to mind as many beautiful lost things as I could. Drawing them closer, holding on to them.

In 1957's 'There's No You,' Sinatra is suspended at the intersection of a loss he can't face and a memory he can't relinquish.

Memories, even bittersweet ones, are better than nothing.

Nostalgia is not what it used to be.

There is no pain so great as the memory of joy in present grief.

The only time I get a tear in my eye is when I think of what I can possibly miss.

All the best songs have an element of sadness.

I remember my youth and the feeling that will never come back any more

Mournful and Never-ending Remembrance.

How can my old photographs fail to create in me a feeling of emptiness and sorrow? They make me acutely aware that this second deprivation will be final this time.

I rarely think about my childhood. It's a slippery thing I can't keep hold of for long - it slithers out of my grasp. And a lot of the time I remember what was missing instead of what was there. I am a chronicler of absence.

I felt that I was leaving part of myself behind, and that wherever I went afterwards I should feel the lack of it, and search for it hopelessly, as ghosts are said to do, frequenting the spots where they buried material treasures without which they cannot pay their way to the nether world.

We, their hearts, become fearful just thinking of loved ones who go away forever, or of moments that could have been good but weren't, or of moments that could have been found but were forever hidden in the sands.

But what of life whose bitter hungry sea Flows at our heels, and gloom of sunless night Covers the days which never more return? Ambition, love and all the thoughts that burn We lose too soon, and only find delight In withered husks of some dead memory.

The calendar has a magic that makes us imagine a memory can be resurrected and revived, but nothing returns.