"Forgetfulness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... boats on the lagoon side of the reef, Pauline was winning golden opinions among the women at the camp by the hearty, unaffected way in which she went about making herself generally useful. O blessed simplicity, how adorable art thou in man and woman! Self-forgetfulness was a salient point in Pauline's character, and, being conjoined with strong powers of sympathy, active good-will to man and beast, and more than the average of intellectual capacity, with an under-current of rippling fun, the girl's ...
— The Island Queen • R.M. Ballantyne
... all past!" he said despairingly. "She is lost to me forever! Her memory breaks my heart! I will not remember any longer! I will forfeit all to forgetfulness. Alas, alas, Cornelia! Though you would not believe me, it was the perfectest love that I ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... adorable Trinity, is entering the womb of this maiden, there to wrap Himself in her flesh and to pass through the common course of a human child's development till He shall reach the hour of the Nativity. When we try to grasp the reach of the divine Love, its depth, its self-forgetfulness, we must stand in the cottage in Nazareth and hear the angelic salutation. And then surely our own hearts cannot fail to respond to the revelation of the divine love; and something of our love that goes out to our hidden Lord, goes out too to the maiden-mother ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... on board the galley of his parents' old friends. Wine should bring him forgetfulness, too, bless him again with the sense of joyous existence which he knew so well, and which he now seemed on the point ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... teaching I shall still hold fast. My first draught, to faithful love, Bruennhilde, I drink to you!" With which secret toast to the absent beloved he sets the horn to his lips and drains it—to the motif of Evil Enchantment, the motif of the Cup of Forgetfulness, closely resembling the Tarnhelm-motif, but sweeter,—cruel as a treacherous caress. This whole passage, surpassingly exquisite to the ear, is painful to the heart as hardly another in the opera, fertile as this is in tragic moments. ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... raising my hands to my throat, I found it to be swollen and inflamed. Then the floor upon which I lay seemed to be rocking like the deck of a ship, and I glided back again into a place of darkness and forgetfulness. ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... the subtle and indirect motions of imagination and feeling. His influence on me was great, and opposed to the natural unfolding of my character, which was fervent, of strong grasp, and disposed to infatuation, and self-forgetfulness. He made the common prose world so present to me, that my natural bias was controlled. I did not go mad, as many would do, at being continually roused from my dreams. I had too much strength to be crushed,—and since I must put on the fetters, could not submit ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... expressed on any man's countenance. The colonel looked but once; he caught the image of the bird trailing its pinions in the dust, he heard the word Resurgam audibly pronounced; his color fled, his lips grew livid with passion; and, furiously unsheathing his sword, he sprung, with headlong forgetfulness of time and place, upon his calm antagonist. With the advantage of perfect self-possession, Maximilian found it easy to parry the tempestuous blows of the colonel; and he would, perhaps, have found it easy to disarm him. But at this moment the crowd, who had been ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... search for the runaway I was the creature of a fixed idea. A fiery energy spurred me on all my time. I was determined now to find out my father's murderer. I was determined to shake off the atmosphere of doubt and forgetfulness. I was determined to recall those first scenes of my life ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... last time, of putting on those white silk shoes, for she would allow no other to touch the feet of the little angel who lay dead. And now she sat motionless, as though her strength were spent, and the intensity of her grief had lulled her into forgetfulness. ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... in perfect forgetfulness of their hardships and dangers, the slumbers of Dunwoodie were broken and unquiet. After spending a night of restlessness, he arose, unrefreshed, from the rude bed where he had thrown himself in his clothes, and, without awaking any of the group ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... be visited as a plain gentleman, was the remark (if it was made) of a snob: it was clearly a legitimate deprecation, spoken by a man who had written nothing notable for twenty-six years, which Voltaire misunderstood in a moment of stupidity, or in one of forgetfulness misrepresented. His superiority and his irony came from a just sense of the perspective of things, and, not preventing affection for his friends, left him indifferent to his foes. Probably, also, a course of dissipation (at which Swift hints) in his youth, acting on a temperament not particularly ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... faith in his theory that absence always cured love, also in his belief that his was cured and half forgotten. At that moment he experienced a sharp pang, however, that was not very like forgetfulness, but which Valentine converted almost into self-scorn ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... source of the stream which had thus reached its rapids, and was plunging on toward its annihilating cataract, lay far back in the early days of Rathbawne's commercial career. McGrath was a man who practiced neither the vice of forgetfulness nor the virtue of forgiveness. As plain as the event of a yesterday lay upon his memory his contemptuous dismissal from Rathbawne's employ, charged in particular with a petty peculation, and in general with the indisputable fact of being a bad influence in the mills. ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... night brings no forgetfulness. Those long voiceless nights of South Africa! Not a bird's call, nor a chirp from the tiny creatures which hide in the grass. A white moon, a wide heaven filled with strange stars, and the tall moon-flowers at the gate lifting up their mute white ...
— A Woman's Part in a Revolution • Natalie Harris Hammond
... assure you, madam, that it was owing only to forgetfulness that I did not return your two letters which you will find enclosed. I have never thought of belying my own nature by taking a cowardly revenge upon you, and I forgive you most willingly the two giddy acts of which you have been guilty, whether they were committed thoughtlessly or ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... remarked that without Mrs. Morris to supply stained-glass attitudes and the lissome beauty of an angel, the Preraphaelites would have long since gone down to dust and forgetfulness. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... that had been dead so many hundred years, how dull was he, who having a real motive and cue for passion, a real king and a dear father murdered, was yet so little moved, that his revenge all this while had seemed to have slept in dull and muddy forgetfulness! and while he meditated on actors and acting, and the powerful effects which a good play, represented to the life, has upon the spectator, he remembered the instance of some murderer, who seeing a murder on the stage, was by the mere force of the scene and resemblance of circumstances ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... running over Arabella's story, and putting the two tales side by side. So this was "the boy," who had been so generously treated and been so selfish in return; the boy who had repaid Martin's generosity with forgetfulness, and had helped to lengthen poor little Arabella's years of waiting. Her anxiety for Arabella had been swept away. She was telling herself that she should be relieved and thankful for that, but, strange to say, her ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... exceptions, for they were only exceptions, and rare ones, to this rule, have been mentioned as they occurred; but in general, however considerable the benefit conferred, it was forgotten in a day; and this forgetfulness was not unfrequently aggravated by their giving out that their benefactor had been so shabby as to make them no present at all. Even those individuals who, either from good behaviour or superior intelligence, had been most noticed by us, and particularly such as had slept on board ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... It is the forgetfulness of this psychological law which stultifies the so-called liberal Christianity. It is the realization of it which constitutes the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... unpleasant happenings, we are able to fix our thoughts upon a photograph or picture that may be there, and by studying it we are able to imagine ourselves far, far away, in some spot where nature makes everything pleasant and soothes us into forgetfulness of all that can disturb our happiness. Many an invalid—many an unfortunate one is thus made content by pictures during hours that would otherwise be wretched. This is the result of cultivating the perceptive and imaginative faculties, and when once this is done, we have a source of pleasure ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture - Painting • Clara Erskine Clement
... is but a sleep and a forgetting; The soul that rises with us, our life's star, Has had elsewhere its setting, and cometh from afar, Not in entire forgetfulness, not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... he would like to be thanked or treated humanely, while every look and word and thought of hers was for the soldiers. It was so different from what he had always found, and yet there was the nobleness of self-forgetfulness in the difference. But for all this vivid memory of those hours, it was imagination rather than recollection that occupied him most with her when she had left him. For he was picturing how she would look, and what she would say, ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... regret to the publisher, and has added considerably to the expenditure otherwise necessarily made, in attempting to rescue from oblivion the many interesting incidents, now, for the first time recorded. To preserve them from falling into the gulph of forgetfulness, was the chief motive which the publisher had in view; and should the profits of the work be sufficient to defray the expenses, actually incurred in its preparation and completion, he will be abundantly satisfied. That he will be thus far remunerated, is not for an instant doubted,—the ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... what had just occurred—a forgetfulness which insensibly carried her back to the moment when she had given me some order which involved my departure from the room—she impetuously called out over her shoulder which she had turned on opening ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... the deuce was the name?" he presently said, half aloud, scratching his head, and wrinkling his brows horizontally. He had not really cared or thought about this point of forgetfulness until it occurred to him in his invention of annoyances ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... while many were endeavouring to learn courage in our supremest need from the spectacle of that heroic patience, a distant writer little knew that it had been his fortune to bring to such a sufferer an hour's forgetfulness ...
— Eric Brighteyes • H. Rider Haggard
... birth-day, Johnson has this note: 'I am now beginning the seventy-second year of my life, with more strength of body, and greater vigour of mind, than I think is common at that age.' But still he complains of sleepless nights and idle days, and forgetfulness, or neglect of resolutions. He thus pathetically expresses himself,—'Surely I shall not spend my whole life ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... blond, dull and phlegmatic, introduced Anthony ponderously to the problems of attention, right face, about face, and at ease. His principal defect was his forgetfulness. He often kept the company straining and aching at attention for five minutes while he stood out in front and explained a new movement—as a result only the men in the centre knew what it was all about—those on ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... emporium—has a trick of forgetting, condensing all interests into those of the present moment. It is much addicted to believing that which never had an existence, and of overlooking that which is occurring directly under its nose. So marked is this tendency to forgetfulness, we should not be surprised to hear some of the Manhattanese pretend that our legend is nothing but a fiction, and deny the existence of the Molly, Captain Spike, and even of Biddy Noon. But we know them too well to mind what they say, and shall go on and finish our narrative in our own ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... the senses are so powerful in a decline of the State there should come at the same time," said I, "a quick forgetfulness of the human dead and an easy change of ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... his guns to Hopalong, who caught them in the air and turning, faced Tex, who stood white of face and completely lost in the forgetfulness of admiration and amazement. The guns jerked again and a button flew from the buckskin shirt of his enemy; another tore a flower from his breast and another drove it into the ground at his feet as others stirred his hair and cut the buckle off his pretty sombrero. Tex, ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... stifle the unspoken pain which comes to all of us and which in not every instance can we so easily cast off. Some men travel; some men go out into the world to lose their own trouble in administering to the trouble of other people; some find forgetfulness in work—hard, strenuous labour; most of us—especially when our trouble be not overwhelming—find solace in art, or music, and especially in books. For books take one suddenly into another world, among other men and women; and sometimes in ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... says the same missionary, to see how meekly the whole nation acquiesces in the decision of a withered old hag, and how completely the old familiar words fall instantly out of use and are never repeated either through force of habit or forgetfulness. In the seven years that Dobrizhoffer spent among these Indians the native word for jaguar was changed thrice, and the words for crocodile, thorn, and the slaughter of cattle underwent similar though less varied ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... Ethereal warmth, and there to pine Immovable, infixt, and frozen round, Periods of time, thence hurried back to fire. They ferry over this Lethean Sound Both to and fro, thir sorrow to augment, And wish and struggle, as they pass, to reach The tempting stream, with one small drop to loose In sweet forgetfulness all pain and woe, All in one moment, and so neer the brink; But fate withstands, and to oppose th' attempt 610 Medusa with Gorgonian terror guards The Ford, and of it self the water flies All taste of living ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... and this was evidently none of the best. Though I would hardly confess the feeling of depression even to myself, I must say that it was not on a bed of roses I lay these nights until sleep came and carried me off into the land of forgetfulness. ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... see the hurried and brief meeting between Bartlett and Gertie Higgins, but he had seen enough to cause forgetfulness of mundane things. For an instant he stared after the vanished vision. Then he stepped blindly forward, tripped over something—"his off hind leg," so Captain Sol afterwards vowed—and fell sprawling, ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln
... occurrence renewed the alarm. Julia had one night remained in her closet later than usual. A favorite book had engaged her attention beyond the hour of customary repose, and every inhabitant of the castle, except herself, had long been lost in sleep. She was roused from her forgetfulness, by the sound of the castle clock, which struck one. Surprised at the lateness of the hour, she rose in haste, and was moving to her chamber, when the beauty of the night attracted her to the window. She opened it; and observing a fine effect of ...
— A Sicilian Romance • Ann Radcliffe
... in words. She was overwhelmed with it all. She sank to the ground, and crawled a little way over it. "Bury me—bury me!" she still seemed to hear. She would rather have buried herself, if the grave could be an eternal forgetfulness of everything. It was the awakening hour of serious thought, of terrible thoughts, that made her shudder. Superstition came, too, by turns heating and chilling her blood; and things she would scarcely ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... had closed and it was too late to call her back, I recollected one piece of forgetfulness on my part; I had never thought to ask ...
— A Queen's Error • Henry Curties
... at Bourne, and tried to bring forgetfulness by drink—and drink brought boastfulness; for that he had no more the spirit left to do great deeds, he must needs babble of the great deeds which he had done, and hurl insult and defiance at his Norman neighbours. And in the space of ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... hearing, and the unoccupied portions of the human body. These are the fifty properties, as declared, that constitute the essence of the five elementary entities.[1106] Patience, reasoning or disputation, remembrance, forgetfulness or error, imagination, endurance, propensity towards good, propensity towards evil, and restlessness,—these are the properties of the mind. Destruction of both good and evil thoughts (i.e., dreamless ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... world, a devotion which all the bribes of the universe would not be able to shake. We have heard the story of that degraded criminal who, when sentence of death was passed upon him, turned to his accomplice in guilt, in whose favour a verdict of acquittal was brought in, and in glorious self-forgetfulness exclaimed—"Thank God, you are saved!" The savage and barbarous Indian whose life has been one unbroken series of cruelty and crime, will submit to a slow, lingering, torturing death, rather than betray ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... him with self-comparisons] [Theobald interpreted "him" as Cawdor; Johnson, in 1745, accused Shakespeare of forgetfulness on the basis of Theobald's error; and Warburton here speaks of "blunder upon blunder."] The second blunderer ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... that my generous Clarinda[73] will not think my silence, for now a long week, has been in any decree owing to my forgetfulness. I have been tossed about through the country ever since I wrote you; and am here, returning from Dumfries-shire, at an inn, the post office of the place, with just so long time as my horse eats his corn, to write you. I have been hurried with ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... time forth, Gwyn was on watch over himself, day and night, like a sentinel over whom hangs the sentence of death, should he fall asleep on duty. He was ever vigilant lest, he, in a moment of forgetfulness, might, by some slip of conduct, or in a moment of ...
— Welsh Fairy Tales • William Elliot Griffis
... few have produced any perceptible effect on the mass of human character. By far the greater part have been, even by their contemporaries, unnoticed and unknown. Not many a one has made its little mark upon that generation that produced it, though it sunk with that generation to utter forgetfulness. But, after the ceaseless toil of six thousand years, how few have been the works, the adamantine basis of whose reputation has stood unhurt amid the fluctuations of time, and whose impression can be traced through ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... member, in a servile capacity. These men had freed him, soon after they purchased him from his master, and in consideration he had taken the oath as one of their gang, and had sworn, with other things, to appear to be deaf and dumb, so long as he should live—the penalty for any forgetfulness, or otherwise, that should betray that he could either speak or hear, being death! That he had been educated to this end; that the band had men who could converse with him readily by signs, and that he had been so much accustomed ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... relation to the Father in heaven is disturbed, and that, whilst there flow out from Him only amity and love, these are met by us with antagonism often, with opposition of will often, with alienation of heart often, and with indifference and forgetfulness almost uniformly. So the first thing to be done to make men at peace with one another and with themselves is to rectify their relation to God, and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... patronise from a lofty vantage ground, so difficult to make those below it feel that the distance is not thought of as an impassable gulf, but is bridged over by the true politeness which lies not on the surface, but has its root deep in the consideration for others, which finds expression in forgetfulness of self, and in remembering the feelings and tastes of those with whom we are brought ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... In those glad times Of my prosperity Taught I in rhymes; Now from forgetfulness Wanders my tongue, Wasting in fretfulness, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... and live with you like that, and keep it all a glorious thing; but I am not—only a weak creature, and the memory of my broken word, and Josiah's sorrow, and your mother's anguish, would kill all joy. We could have blissful moments of forgetfulness, but the great ghost of remorse would chase for me all happiness away. Dearest, I love you so; but oh, I could not live, haunted ...
— Beyond The Rocks - A Love Story • Elinor Glyn
... of the prairie or the chaparral; the living, loving loneliness of the desert; but yonder on the veld is a life of the night which possesses all the others have, and something of its own besides; something which gets into the bones and makes for forgetfulness of the world. It lifts a man away from the fret of life, and sets his feet on the heights where ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the acting edition is added— "MOOR. And would you learn forgetfulness in that holy garb there? (Pointing to a nun's habit.) "AMELIA. To-morrow I hope to do so. Shall we continue our ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... a smile, in which, however, there was not a little sadness. There was nothing in the words themselves beyond that painful consideration for others and forgetfulness of self which the priest had observed in her the night before; but the voice was a wonderful one—a round, full contralto, yet soft and low, with a certain mysteriously tremulous undertone that fell with ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... had honestly and openly withdrawn from the position that Henry would be able to go to the prize-giving. They seemed to have silently agreed to bury the futile mendacity of the earlier afternoon in everlasting forgetfulness. ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... traditions of the army. To the man himself those hours of danger, struggle and weariness, were more a dream than a reality. He passed through them almost unconsciously, a soldier performing his duty in utter forgetfulness of self, nerved by the discipline of years of service, by the importance of his mission, and by memory of Molly McDonald. Love and duty held him reeling in the saddle, brought him ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... Bedawin of the Old Testament are the Amalekites, and between the Israelite and the Amalekite there was the difference that there is between the peasant and the gypsy. The fact is important, and the forgetfulness of it has led more than one ...
— Early Israel and the Surrounding Nations • Archibald Sayce
... sympathizers, and made Genet's reception, in some respects, more flattering to his personal and national pride. In a letter to Madison at this time, Jefferson, influenced by the exultation of the movement, and in apparent forgetfulness of the serious offence which the ardent Genet had committed against the dignity of the United States and the ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... time. Counts, marquises, Churchmen—all have passed upon the scroll of those three hundred years; some left indelible marks for good, some for evil; whilst others, effete and useless, are buried in forgetfulness. The Spanish character, architecture, institutions, and class distinctions were now indelibly stamped upon the people of Mexico. The Aztec regime had passed for ever; the Indian race was outclassed and subordinate; and the mestizos, the people of mixed native and Hispanic blood, were rapidly ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... on which he learnt the contents of the letter from Dresden, they had spent a part of nearly every day in each other's company. Louise had borne him no malice for what he had said to her; indeed, with the generous forgetfulness of offence, which was one of the most astonishing traits in her character, she met him, the day after, as though nothing had passed between them. By common consent, they never referred to the matter again; Maurice did not know to this day, whether or how she had answered the letter. For, ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... Marcolina was now advancing—although in her case there did not seem to exist any consciousness of exceptional courage. Fascinated by the uniqueness of her methods of thought and expression, he almost forgot that he was walking beside a young, beautiful, desirable woman, a forgetfulness all the more remarkable as the two were alone in the leafy alley, and at a considerable ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler
... in their actual strife; to deal with questions, not in an abstract shape, but mixed up with the affections, passions, relations of human creatures, is a course which must lead him, it is thought, into a great forgetfulness of his office, and of all that is ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... lost all reality to him, he had been too much concerned to think of probabilities at all. Sensibility had overcome his agnosticism, and he had forgotten that it was possible to doubt. He knew he had not acted philosophically; but he felt that philosophy, compared with sympathy and self-forgetfulness, is of very ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... that these injunctions must be taken quite seriously. The father's appearance brought an instantaneous change in the atmosphere of the place, the boy strove instinctly to be as little noticeable as possible. If his mercurial temperament lured him into temporary forgetfulness, a single stern word from the father sent him back into silence and the refuge of his own corner—or ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... earth—and Jack. What if, in time to come, he should forget her! Ah! that was the bitterest stroke of all; and she realized that, no matter how deeply a person may love, when the object of that affection dies, time brings balm to his woe, and mellows it into forgetfulness or to ...
— Pretty Madcap Dorothy - How She Won a Lover • Laura Jean Libbey
... not having acknowledged your kind present earlier, but that unknown something which was never yet discovered, though so often speculated upon, which stands in the way of lazy folks' answering letters, has presented its usual obstacle. It is not forgetfulness, nor disrespect, nor incivility, but terribly ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... Does forgetfulness efface faults or destroy their consequences? Could the assassin, who has lost all memory of the crime committed the previous evening, change his deed or its results in the slightest degree? Rebirths are nothing more than the morrows of former lives, and though the merciful waters of Lethe ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... then eighteen years old, I am now over eighty-six; and the straits of Time have widened and widened with every year, so that many things appear to have been carried away into forgetfulness by the stress and flow of full waters. But not so! They are only lying in out-of-the-way corners of consciousness, and can easily be recalled by some word that has the potency of ...
— An Orkney Maid • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... said he to him, "your last words show a singular forgetfulness on your part of our reciprocal agreements. You had engaged, if you remember, not to take any interest in any one here but yourself and myself. After that, what difference can it make to you, whether my son is happy or ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... with profound attention. When one of them, out of forgetfulness, or affection for him, omitted some of the circumstances chargeable upon the accused, Sam supplied them. By this means the chain of facts which has been related was unfolded ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... Ministers, some of whom had been stout Republicans on paper but a few years before; and by the Chamber, which, such is the blessed constitution of French elections, will generally vote, unvote, revote in any way the Government wishes. With a wondrous union, and happy forgetfulness of principle, monarch, ministers, and deputies issued the restriction laws; the Press was sent to prison; as for the poor dear Caricature, it was fairly murdered. No more political satires appear now, and "through the eye, correct the heart;" no more ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... say that our migrations within the limits of our own continent have not been productive of so much forgetfulness. I have been struck, for instance, since I came to St. Louis, with what I may call the source-consciousness of our western population. Everyone, whether he is particularly interested in genealogy or not, knows ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... she whispered to us when later we called to see how she was getting on; and my wife looked at me across the rumpled cot and her lips trembled. I knew what was in her mind. Would her daughters have rushed to her with the same forgetfulness of self as to this prematurely gray and wrinkled woman whose ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... thoughtful minds and the self-denying efforts of good philanthropical and religious people—such a contemplation, I say, may come between us and the recognition of the highest source from which it flows, and be corrupted into forgetfulness of God. 'Beware lest when thou hast eaten and art full, and thy silver and thy gold is multiplied, and all that thou hast is multiplied, then thine heart be lifted up, and thou forget the Lord thy God... ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... he reconcile the ways of God to them and to us? The thought of my child burns at my heart, and its last struggle—my bosom is quivering with it still. For this Jacques took me to his heart, and I have ever since had—alas! not forgetfulness of my child—but a home, and the good fame that a woman cannot live without, and the love of a brave and tender heart—tender to me, however hard to those we hate. Jacques lives in honour, and in a station of command, though ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... of them did eat the honey-sweet fruit of the lotus had no more wish to bring tidings nor to come back, but there he chose to abide with the lotus-eating men, ever feeding on the lotus and forgetful of his homeward way." In Tennyson's Lotos-Eaters there is no forgetfulness of friends and home: "Sweet it was to dream of Fatherland, Of child, and wife and slave." Masson also refers to Plato's ethical application of the story (Rep. viii.); "Plato speaks of the moral lotophagus, ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... his hands, and imprint his holy kiss upon the forehead. Her little girl, her sole companion and chief treasure in the world, stood prattling before her; and the beauty of the young mother was tenfold increased by the utter forgetfulness of herself, which she manifested as she bent over her child, absorbed in the beauty of that dear little image which she was never ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... with evergreens; now in more open grounds, skirted with hills and dotted with silent, two-penny cottages. Sometimes Picton mounted his pyramid of trunk-leather for a mile or so of nods; sometimes I essayed the high perch, and holding on by a cord, dropped off in a moment's forgetfulness, with the constant fear of waking up in a mud-hole, or under the wagon-wheels. But even these respites were brief. It is not easy to ride up hill and down by rock and rut, under such conditions. We were very soon convinced it was best to leave the wagon to its load ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... observed going off with Mr Webb, standing at the entrance-port singing out for the boat; he had forgotten his dirk, he said, and had come back to fetch it. The boat, however, had got some distance off, and he was left behind. Poor fellow, it was a fatal piece of forgetfulness for him. ...
— The Loss of the Royal George • W.H.G. Kingston
... struck midnight, and there was a foot-fall in the cloister. I was startled by it out of an entire forgetfulness of all around me, for I was lying on my bed in the monastery cell, with my hands clasped over my eyes, as I had thrown myself down on coming in; and, with a strange contrariety, my mind, broken rudely from its hope, had flown to my far away home, oblivious of the benumbed ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... it, memory will make it, fancy or imagination will make it. Now, I say, it will cry out of sin, of justice, and of the terribleness of the punishment that hath swallowed him up that has lost himself. Here will be no forgetfulness; yet nothing shall be thought on but that which will wound and kill; here will be no time, cause, or means for diversion; all will stick and gnaw like a viper. Now the memory will go out to where sin was heretofore committed, it will also go out to the word that did forbid ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... amusement. To see how she managed them all was worth the sacrifice of a little time—unconsciously he became more fraternal in his thoughts. He spoke to foolish faded Mrs Fred with a total forgiveness and forgetfulness of her spiteful speech. He hoped she would like Carlingford; he said something to the children. But it was not easy to talk in presence of that amazing family party, the existence of which he had not dreamed of a few ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... are sentimental, and are falsified by self-admiration and self-pity. The writer of these recollections has thought that if the examination of his earliest years was to be undertaken at all, it should be attempted while his memory is still perfectly vivid and while he is still unbiased by the forgetfulness or the sensibility ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... got home, a strange, long, sweet day began for him, misty as forgetfulness. Like a man released from prison or from hospital, he stared at the long-familiar objects and wondered that the tables, the windows, the chairs, the light, and the sea stirred in him a keen, childish delight such as he had not known for long, long years. Nadyezhda Fyodorovna, pale and haggard, ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... merriment. This is true also of some Russian composers, whose scherzos have the desperate gayety which speaks from the music of a sad people whose merrymaking is not a spontaneous expression of exuberant spirits but a striving after self-forgetfulness. The Scherzo is the successor of the Minuet, whose rhythm and form served the composers down to Beethoven. It was he who substituted the Scherzo, which retains the chief formal characteristics of the courtly old dance in being ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... at, though she could hardly believe that all the congregation could not guess with what a startled feeling her heart had begun to beat. By and by the influences of the place and the service began to soothe her, though she only succeeded in excluding her lovers by a conscious process of forgetfulness which was not so far removed from memory as ...
— Bulldog And Butterfly - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... disturbed them. They felt that their credentials as schoolmasters were being examined and found wanting. They accused the boys of priggery. It was a most false charge, for the boys were enthusiasts, and enthusiasm is a form of self-forgetfulness as priggery is a form of self-consciousness. Still priggery was the word. The charge of "priggery" was added to the ...
— The School and the World • Victor Gollancz and David Somervell
... this question it will be necessary to attend with care to the order and date of each circumstance. By a temporary forgetfulness of this indispensable part of an historian's duty, the writers who have adopted the view most adverse to Henry as a son, have been led to give an incorrect view of the whole transaction, especially as it affects the character and ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... qualities, the least. As is well known, this difference is expressed not only in the vigor, reliability, and promptness of their memory, but also in the field of memory, in the accompaniment of rapid prehensivity by rapid forgetfulness, or slow prehensivity and slow forgetfulness, or in the contrast between narrow, but intense memory, ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... "But forgetfulness is not forgiveness. You do not know how I carried messages between my father and uncle, when one was in bondage and the other in hiding, so that their plans were laid through me. I am guilty with them. Therefore I would hear you say at least that you will try to forgive before I pass ...
— A Prince of Cornwall - A Story of Glastonbury and the West in the Days of Ina of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... out in too many fogs on that very bay to mind this one. It was a nuisance, because it necessitated cutting short my voyage, although that voyage had no objective point and was merely an aimless cruise in search of solitude and forgetfulness. The solitude I had found, the forgetfulness, of course, I had not. And now, when the solitude was more complete than ever, surrounded by this gray dismalness, with nothing whatever to look at to divert my attention, I knew I should be more bitterly miserable ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... that her companions had done better than herself. Where she had failed to answer a question, a reminder of the solution filled her with despair. Of course! It was as simple as ABC. She had known it off by heart. Nothing short of softening of the brain could explain such idiotic forgetfulness. ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... Such heroic self-forgetfulness is not the exclusive possession of men of action; it lies within the reach of any man who is strong enough to grasp it. Two writers of our time have nobly worn this jewel of courage in the eyes of the world. John Addington ...
— Essays On Work And Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... about it, smiles; and Miss Lavinia, staidest of her sex, suspecting something of it, looks grave and dignified, but does not frown; and Verty, with perfect forgetfulness of the presence of these persons, and much carelessness in regard to their opinions, gazes upon Redbud with his dreamy smile, and talks ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... 'tapper', the man who keeps the inn, or has charge of the tap, or as 'bakester', at this day used in Scotland for 'baker', as 'dyester' for 'dyer', the word did originally belong of right and exclusively to women; but with the gradual transfer of the occupation to men, and an increasing forgetfulness of what this termination implied, there went also a transfer of the name{175}, just as in other words, and out of the same causes, the exact converse has found place; and 'baker' or 'brewer', not ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... familiar voices of the mourning pines, and remembered their soothing magic, and a stinging reproach swept over her at the thought of her forgetfulness of them. They had been friends when no other friends were near. Along with the flood of memories came Matty's ghastly ghost stories and her past belief that her mother's spirit hovered ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... as the vizier had finished his remark. "Son," said the sultan to him, "this hall is the most worthy of admiration of any in the world; there is only one thing that surprises me, which is to find one of the windows unfinished. Is it from the forgetfulness or negligence of the workmen, or want of time, that they have not put the finishing stroke to so beautiful a piece of architecture?" "Sir," answered Alla ad Deen, "it was for none of these reasons ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.
... slain, that her little niece was dead, that her little cousins Posy and Birdy were dead, that little Gottschalk too was dead—all murdered and dead! And she, too, would have succumbed to the agony of this realization, had not a kind swoon poured forgetfulness ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... had recovered herself, she turned to Madame de Hell, and bade her observe how the seal of sorrow and forgetfulness was set upon everything. Formerly the very stones of the court had breathed of life, and sunshine, and youth; formerly that poor dog had been bright and well-favoured, and as happy as are all things that are loved. "But now," she exclaimed, ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... would do as he said, I laid my head down, and was soon once more in forgetfulness. It was not daylight. When I again awoke, and found Cross snoring in the chair by the bedside; poor fellow, he had never lain down since he came on shore, when the captain was first taken ill. I felt much better, although my wounds tingled ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... to live nine years at Carthage—nine years that he squandered in obscure tasks, in disputes sterile or unfortunate for himself and others—briefly, in an utter forgetfulness of his true vocation. "And during this time Thou wert silent, O my God!" he cries, in recalling only the faults of his early youth. Now, the silence of God lay heavy. And yet even in those years his tormented soul had ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... have lived; it was foreshadowed in dreams that we leaped out of in the cold sweat of terror; in the "dissolving views" of dark day-visions; all omens pointed to it; all paths led to it. After the tossing half-forgetfulness of the first sleep that follows such an event, it comes upon us afresh, as a surprise, at waking; in a few moments it ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... comes simplicity, which may be defined as forgetfulness of self. There is nothing more fatal to agreeable Conversation than thinking perpetually of one's self. Young persons, on first going into society, are very apt to fall into the error of supposing that all eyes and ears are fixed upon them, to observe how awkwardly ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... fine etching—a rich distinctness attained by shades, not colors. Instead of being outshone by more brilliant-hued women, Miss Northrop had always had the effect of making them look chromo-like. So, too, a certain nobility and self-forgetfulness of manner made the more elaborate manners of others seem the crude device of inferiority. It was a good deal due to her eyes; she had most wonderful eyes, and I doubt if any man or many women ever met them in a full look without feeling a ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 9 • Various
... emphasis to the faint line which had begun to display itself, not unattractively, between her eyebrows and the irregular curve of her brown hair. She was growing very weary of it all, the distraction which she had sought, the forgetfulness of self which she had hoped to achieve, by living perpetually in a crowd. Indeed, to such a point had she carried her endeavours, that Mrs. Lightmark's beauty was already becoming a matter of almost public ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... running. Vibhatsu, therefore, who is still to live undiscovered hath appeared before us. And if Vibhatsu hath come before the term of exile is at end, the Pandavas shall have to pass another twelve years in the woods. Whether it is due to forgetfulness (on their part) induced by desire of dominion, or whether it is a mistake of ours, it behoveth Bhishma to calculate the shortness or excess (of the promised period). When an object of desire may or may not be attained, a doubt ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... the efforts of men. A few years of growth and aspiration—then the fiery bourgeoning to a climax, and, after that, incorporation in the soil of a forgetfulness that seems indifferent alike to their exertions and their ambitions. But the end is not here. Somewhere, and most certainly in some other form, the effort achieves immortality and reasserts itself, ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... supposed to be his parents should discover and reclaim him. But as his nerves recovered their tone, as the horrors of his life as a screever faded into softer tints, as that boon of poor humanity—forgetfulness—healed his wounds, and he began to go about the streets without thinking of the hunchback at every corner, he felt more and more inclined to risk any thing to know how his old friends fared. There also grew upon him a conviction that the Cheap Jack's story was false. He knew enough ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... former as part of Hooker's invincible and still boyish extravagance, and the latter as part of his equally characteristic assumption. Perhaps he was conscious, too, notwithstanding the lapse of years and the condonation of separation and forgetfulness, that he deserved little delicacy from the hands of Susy's husband. Nevertheless, he dreaded to hear him speak again of her; and the fear was realized in ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... de Belgique, and published in the Revue Scientique, reviews the attempts of various naturalists to make comparisons between the strength of large animals and that of small ones, especially insects, and shows that ignorance or forgetfulness of physical laws ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 430, March 29, 1884 • Various
... come to reconcile, not to condemn; I am not come to compel, but to call again; I am not come to call anything in question already done; but my commission is of grace and clemency to such as will receive it—for, touching all matters that be past, they shall be as things cast into the sea of forgetfulness. ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... souls, for their sakes fighting a hard world. Then the sons go forth, north and south, and the daughters find husbands and joys and sorrows of their own, and both half forget them, as is nature's way. Last of all those parents die, as also is nature's way, and the half forgetfulness becomes whole as surely as the young moon grows to full. Well, well, this is a lesson that each generation must learn in turn, as you will know ere all is done. Although you are my youngest, I'll not shame to say I have loved you best ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard
... before our eyes! Golden circlets, with their adornments of coloured and lustrous gems, have bound the brow of infamy as well as that of honour—a mockery to both; as though virtue required a reward beyond the fulfilment of its own high purposes, or that infamy could be cheated into the forgetfulness of its vileness by the weight around its temples! Gilded coaches have glided before us, in which sat men who thought the buzz and shouts of crowds a guerdon for the toils, the anxieties, and, too often, the peculations of a life. Our ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... doubtful whether this permission had been granted from motives of humanity, from forgetfulness, or from some new plan having been adopted; the general might possibly have received orders, permitting him to dispose of us as he should think proper, and have no objection to getting rid of me also, as a prisoner of war, provided ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... above those feasters midnight's stars Hung, ceased the Danaans from the feast and wine, And turned to sleep's forgetfulness of care, For that with yesterday's war-travail all Were wearied; wherefore they, who fain all night Had revelled, needs must cease: how loth soe'er, Sleep drew them thence; ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... that the surgeons forbade his again encountering the fatigues of a campaign. Enfeebled in body, heartbroken at the horrible fate of Gertrudis, and foreseeing the speedy termination of the war, consequent on the concluded treaty of Bergara, he threw up his commission, and left Spain to seek forgetfulness of his ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... busy scenes of her calamitous uncertainties, was only sunk in her own bosom, and ready, upon their removal, to revive with fresh vigour. She was now indeed more unhappy than even in the period of her forgetfulness, yet her mind, was no longer filled with the restless turbulence of hope, which still more than despondency unfitted it ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... which he always welcomed those who visited him in his Highland cottage. Having got beds to ourselves—after repeated requests to roost two in a nest, as the house was small—I soon tumbled into my lair, and in the blessed forgetfulness of sleep the miseries of the day became mingled with the things that were. The next morning, after breakfast, we got a conveyance to take the party over to the Cave, a distance of seven miles. One may really say there is no road. For at least one half of the ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... in June, the one hundred and forty Algonquins well supplied with firearms to defend themselves from marauding Iroquois. Numbers begot courage, courage carelessness; and before the fleet had reached the Chaudiere Falls, at the modern city of Ottawa, the canoes had spread far apart in utter forgetfulness of danger. Not twenty were within calling distance when an Indian prophet, or wandering medicine man, ran down to the shore, throwing his blanket and hatchet aside as signal of peace, and shouting out warning of Iroquois warriors ambushed ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... and ten, must certainly have been unfettered by them: to the less brilliantly endowed, however, they have a use as being compendious safeguards against error. Let me then lay down as the best of all rules for writing, "forgetfulness of self, and carefulness of the matter in hand." No simile is out of place that illustrates the subject; in fact a simile as showing the symmetry of this world's arrangement, is always, if a fair one, interesting; every simile is amiss that leads the ...
— Samuel Butler's Cambridge Pieces • Samuel Butler
... she has the wit, the spirit, the goodness, the loveliness to be the noblest of queens to the best of kings; and fails she such choice, it will be because destiny has been struck by some unaccountable forgetfulness." ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... enjoyment is perhaps an inherent consciousness that there is nothing so noble as forgetfulness of self. Therefore it is that we are struck by hearing of the exposure of life and limb to the utmost peril, in oblivion, or recklessness of personal safety, in ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... swear to that, because, in a fatal fit of forgetfulness, seeing every one excited around me, I might have pulled and hauled at ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... are afraid to be alone, and amuse themselves by a perpetual succession of companions; but the difference is not great; in solitude we have our dreams to ourselves, and in company we agree to dream in concert. The end sought in both is forgetfulness of ourselves.' In The Rambler, No. 5, he wrote:—'It may be laid down as a position which will seldom deceive, that when a man cannot bear his own company, there is something wrong. He must fly from himself, either because he feels a tediousness in life from the equipoise ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... matter of fact, however, the pretty senora was quite accustomed to discomfort in varying degrees, and gave less thought to the weather than did the more tenderly sheltered women of the valley, so that no harm came of the forgetfulness; especially since the storm fell far short of Gustavo's expectations and caused that particular prophet the inconvenience of searching his soul and the heavens for an explanation of the sunshine that reprehensibly bathed the valley next day in ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... at last, and with it forgetfulness; morning, too, came in due season, and with it, the daily call ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... distance, and gradually advancing upon her. She had never fastened on the hope of his recovery, and it had dwindled in an almost imperceptible manner. She kept watch over him, and followed his thoughts, without stretching her mind to suppose herself living without him; and was supported by the forgetfulness of self, which gave her no ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Ivanovna was standing on the deck of a Volga steamer and looking alternately at the water and at the picturesque banks. Beside her was standing Ryabovsky, telling her the black shadows on the water were not shadows, but a dream, that it would be sweet to sink into forgetfulness, to die, to become a memory in the sight of that enchanted water with the fantastic glimmer, in sight of the fathomless sky and the mournful, dreamy shores that told of the vanity of our life and of the existence of something higher, blessed, and eternal. The past was vulgar and uninteresting, ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... something had happened to the dashing spirit of the youth. All through those long days in the forest, those short blue nights under the velvet sky, one image had stood before him, calm, smiling, quivering with that illusive light which held men's hearts. Never a day that he could win forgetfulness of the face of Maren Le Moyne, and now he glanced toward her doorway. It lay in the sunlight without a foot upon its sill, and Marc sighed unconsciously. He was not to ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe |
