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Forgetfulness   Listen
noun
Forgetfulness  n.  
1.
The quality of being forgetful; prononess to let slip from the mind.
2.
Loss of remembrance or recollection; a ceasing to remember; oblivion. "A sweet forgetfulness of human care."
3.
Failure to bear in mind; careless omission; inattention; as, forgetfulness of duty.
Synonyms: Forgetfulnes, Oblivion. Forgetfulness is Anglo-Saxon, and oblivion is Latin. The former commonly has reference to persons, and marks a state of mind; the latter commonly has reference to things, and indicates a condition into which they are sunk. We blame a man for his forgetfulness; we speak of some old custom as buried in oblivion. But this discrimination is not strictly adhered to.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Forgetfulness" Quotes from Famous Books



... the question off-hand she herself might have been at a loss to word it, though she knew quite well what it was. It was the old clash between the cause of Sally and its result. It was the thought that, but for a memory that every year seemed to call for a stronger forgetfulness, a more effective oblivion, this little warm star that had shone upon and thawed a frozen life, this salve for the wound it sprang from, would have remained unborn—a nonentity! Yes, she might have had another child—true! But would that child have ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan

... it becomes the more important to fathom the essential conditions of processes like dream building. It will be probably a surprise to hear that neither the state of sleep nor illness is among the indispensable conditions. A whole number of phenomena of the everyday life of healthy persons, forgetfulness, slips in speaking and in holding things, together with a certain class of mistakes, are due to a psychical mechanism analogous to that of the dream and the ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud

... of Shakspeare is his self-forgetfulness. In reading what is written, you do not think of him, but of his productions. "The perfect absence of himself from his own pages makes it difficult for us to conceive of a human being having written them." This remark applies with obvious force to the Bible. The authors of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various

... which can never be exhausted or lose its power is the theme of our message. The mists of gathering ages wrap in slowly thickening folds of forgetfulness all other men and events in history, and make them ghostlike and shadowy; but no distance has yet dimmed or will ever dim that human form divine. Other names are like those stars that blaze out for a while, and then smoulder down into almost complete invisibility; but He is the very Light ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren

... midst the cherub band? Or dost thou laugh in Paradise, or now Upon the Islands of the Blest art thou? Or in his ferry o'er the gloomy water Does Charon bear thee onward, little daughter? And having drunken of forgetfulness Art thou unwitting of my sore distress? Or, casting off thy human, maiden veil, Art thou enfeathered in some nightingale? Or in grim Purgatory must thou stay Until some tiniest stain be washed away? Or hast returned again to where thou wert Ere thou ...
— Laments • Jan Kochanowski

... intellect, who gave up to mankind what was meant for himself, and worked as a labourer in the vineyard of humanity, never crying that the grapes were sour; of a man uniformly cheerful and of good courage, living in that forgetfulness of self which is the truest antidote to despair. And yet there was not quite wanting the note of pain to jar the harmony and make it human. Richard Elton, his chum from boyhood, and vicar of Somerton, in ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill

... with a forgetfulness of the Reverend Melchisedech, which nothing but his desperate circumstances ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... sound of the water, and the singing of our sails, and all the various rumour of wind and sea. After all, it was a good music to sleep to, and, for all my scorn of sleeping landsmen, an irresistible drowsiness stretched me out on the roof of the little cabin, wonderfully rocked into forgetfulness. ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne

... consolation to the hearts of the miserable, lightning vengeance against the wrongs of Providence, imprecations against society, blasphemies against the existence of God, the enjoyments and bestialities of the corporeal nature, purchased by complete forgetfulness of the moral nature, and enjoyed in a debauch of ideas, and ...
— Atheism Among the People • Alphonse de Lamartine

... question. I have the best excuse in recrimination. I wrote to Kilmore from Leyden in Holland, from Louvain in Flanders, and Rouen in France, but received no answer. To what could I attribute this silence but to displeasure or forgetfulness? Whether I was right in my conjecture I do not pretend to determine; but this I must ingenuously own that I have a thousand times in my turn endeavored to forget them, whom I could not but look upon as forgetting me. I have attempted to blot their ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving

... drunkenness of one who drinketh wine, But with the honey of his mouth fulfilled of languishment. All loveliness comprised is within his perfect form, So that o'er all the hearts of men he reigns omnipotent. By God, forgetfulness of him shall never cross my mind. What while I wear the chains of life, nor even when they're rent! Lo, if I live, in love of him I'll live; and, if I die Of love-longing for him, I'll say, ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume II • Anonymous

... One large brass saucepan lay lorn near the doorstep, a proof that Foster was human. For everything except that saucepan a place had been found. That saucepan had witnessed sundry ineffectual efforts to lodge it, and had also suffered frequent forgetfulness. A tin candlestick had taken refuge within it, and was trusting for safety to the might of the obstinate vessel. In the sequel, the candlestick was pitched by Edwin on to the roof of the van, and Darius Clayhanger, coming fussily out of the shop, threw ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett

... had never declared his love, but involuntarily it had betrayed itself on several occasions. Insensibly Caroline was thus led to feel for him more than she dared to avow even to herself, when the sudden change in his manner awakened her from this delightful forgetfulness of every object that was unconnected with her new feelings, and suddenly arrested her steps as she seemed entering the paradise ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth

... 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

... love hath a very different effect from what it causes in the puny part of the species. In the latter it generally destroys all that appetite which tends towards the conservation of the individual; but in the former, though it often induces forgetfulness, and a neglect of food, as well as of everything else; yet place a good piece of well-powdered buttock before a hungry lover, and he seldom fails very handsomely to play his part. Thus it happened in the present case; for though Jones ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding

... into the corner, and remained in that position till evening. Her soul was in torment. That which Nekhludoff told her opened to her that world in which she had suffered and which she had left, hating without understanding it. She had now lost that forgetfulness in which she had lived, and to live with a clear recollection of the past was painful. In the evening she again bought wine, which she drank with ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy

... Enspheres them brilliant in our blue, From firmest base to farthest leap, Because their love of Earth is deep, And they are warriors in accord With life to serve, and pass reward, So touching purest and so heard In the brain's reflex of yon bird: Wherefore their soul in me or mine, Through self-forgetfulness divine, In them, that song aloft maintains To fill the sky and thrill the plains With showerings drawn from human stores, As he to silence nearer soars, Extends the world at wings and dome, More ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various

... affected in their parliamentary orations to be on the side of the popular theory of free trade, and often made speeches so glaringly inconsistent with those previously made by them as to damage the reputation of public men in the national esteem. Presuming upon the ignorance, or forgetfulness, of the population at large, the peer and the commoner have frequently spoken as though they had been the invariable champions of freedom of commerce, and of civil and religious liberty. In 1851 they were the persistent and acrimonious opponents ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... fatal injury. Chloral is a powerful drug that has been much resorted to by unthinking persons to produce sleep. Others, yielding to a morbid reluctance to face the problems of life, have timidly sought shelter in artificial forgetfulness. To all such it is a false friend. Its promises are treason. It degrades the mind, tramples upon the morals, overpowers the will, and destroys ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell

... murmurs, "one 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 ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall

... when I first saw him that he could possibly, at his time of life, bear the rough and tumble of the heaviest fighting in history, and come through with buoyancy of spirit younger men envied and older men recognized as the sign and fruit of self-forgetfulness and the ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott

... carries his sister to the apple close of the Celtic paradise (Barzaz Breiz). Only in Brittany do the sad-hearted people think of the land of death as an island of Avalon, with the eternal sunset lingering behind the flowering apple trees, and gleaming on the fountain of forgetfulness. In Scotland the channering worm doth chide even the souls that come from where, "beside the gate of Paradise, the birk grows fair enough." The Romaic idea of the place of the dead, the garden of Charon, whence "neither in spring or summer, nor when grapes are gleaned ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various

... out of the room; all but Fareham, who watched Lady Castlemaine as she stood by the hearth in an attitude of hopeless self-forgetfulness, leaning against the lofty sculptured chimney-piece, one slender foot in gold-embroidered slipper and transparent stocking poised on the brazen fender, and her proud eyelids lowered as if there was nothing in this world worth looking at but the pile ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon

... debility prevails, attended with a morbidly accumulated excitability; hence, those remedies afford relief, which produce a quick exhaustion of this principle, and thus blunt the feelings, and lull the mind into some degree of forgetfulness of its woes. Hence opium, tobacco, and the fetid gums are often resorted to; and in the hands of a judicious practitioner, they will afford great relief, provided he carefully watch the patient, and prevent their abuse; for, if left to the discretion of the patient, he finds that kind of ...
— Popular Lectures on Zoonomia - Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease • Thomas Garnett

... placid sky, which spread so wide and blue above his head, as if he expected to see the Almighty eye itself beaming from the heavenly vault. But impressions of a serious character are seldom lasting on minds long indulged in forgetfulness. The hesitation of the squatter was consequently of short duration. The language, however, as well as the firm and collected air of the speaker, were the means of preventing much ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper

... sermon, and had spent from eleven to one at his church, attending to small matters, writing notices, fixing hymns, holding the daily half-hour Service instituted during wartime, to which but few ever came. He had hurried back to lunch, scamping it so that he might get to his piano for an hour of forgetfulness. At three he had christened a very noisy baby, and been detained by its parents who wished for information on a variety of topics. At half-past four he had snatched a cup of tea, reading the paper; and had spent from five to seven visiting ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... Five things cause forgetfulness:—Partaking of what has been gnawed by a mouse or a cat, eating bullock's heart, habitual use of olives, drinking water that has been washed in, and placing the feet one upon the other ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various

... the key note to Miss Anthony's strongest characteristic, utter forgetfulness of self, total self-abnegation, self-sacrifice without a consciousness that it was such. Mrs. Hooker's statement that she "had come in at the death" shows the strong faith of most of these early workers that it would ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... hours of toil, It brought forgetfulness to debtors; Time and again from wretched men It struck oppression's ...
— A Little Book of Western Verse • Eugene Field

... benedictions, while the multitude fell upon its knees as one man. Such were the daily spectacles of coloured pomp and of antique solemnity, which so long as the sun was shining, at any rate— dazzled the onlooker into a happy forgetfulness of the reverse side of the Papal dispensation— the nauseating filth of the highways, the cattle stabled in the palaces of the great, and the fever flitting through the ghastly tenements ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey

... an old school-friend, a young barrister from London, staying with him, and that both had been asked to supper that evening at Cotherstone's house. But Cotherstone's annoyance was not because of his own forgetfulness, but because his present abstraction made him dislike the ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher

... victory's note; Not with armor gayly glistening, and with flags that proudly float; Not with air of martial vigor, nor with steady, soldier tramp, Come they grandly marching to us—for the boys are all in camp. With forgetfulness upon it—each within his earthy bed, Waiting for his marching orders—is our Army ...
— Farm Ballads • Will Carleton

... temperaments of the Teutonic stock, as among us of warmer blood. Do not this placid hill-side, yon lake, and the starry heavens, look as if they regretted their late unseemly violence, and wished to cheat the beholder into forgetfulness of their attack on our safety, as an impetuous but generous nature would repent it of the blow given in anger, or of the cutting speech that had escaped in a moment of spleen? What hast thou to say to my opinion, Signor Sigismund, for none know better ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper

... see what you brought on yourself, Bob, by your forgetfulness. Here we have had all the trouble in life to get Carrie to agree to your going while, had she read this letter first, she would not have had a leg to stand upon—at least, metaphorically speaking; practically, no one would doubt it, for ...
— Held Fast For England - A Tale of the Siege of Gibraltar (1779-83) • G. A. Henty

... founded at home an elective monarchy. The true 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 ...
— Early Israel and the Surrounding Nations • Archibald Sayce

... little touched with sobriety and expectation; in short, a more embarrassingly attentive audience never greeted the first effort of a young minister. Under these circumstances there was something touching in the fervent self-forgetfulness which characterized the first exercises of the morning—something which moved ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... delights us more than to overhaul some dingy tome and read a chapter gratuitously. Occasionally, when we have opened some very attractive old book, we have stood reading for hours at the stall, lost in a brown study and worldly forgetfulness, and should probably have read on to the end of the last chapter, had not the vendor of published wisdom offered, in a satirically polite way, to bring us out a chair. "Take a chair, sir; you must be tired."' The first Lord Lytton had a fancy for these plebeian book-marts; whilst Southey ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts

... 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 interest. She was a person to be recognised and recorded by sharp-eyed journalists ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore

... occasionally to pleasanter scenes and places, but the necessity to keep the course, or some hitch in the surface, quickly brings them back. There have been some hours of very steady plodding to-day; these are the best part of the business, they mean forgetfulness and advance. ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott

... crowds for which, at present, the underworld spreads its nets? The great mass of the people, packed in dreary tenements, slaves of machinery by day, slaves of their own starved souls by night, must go somewhere for relaxation and forgetfulness. What would happen if the church should invite them, not ...
— What eight million women want • Rheta Childe Dorr

... speak to him with an openness which she uses to no one else; she says, and in this sentence she gives the secret of much which has appeared inexplicable to the world: "One thing more in regard to myself. The absence and wandering of mind and forgetfulness that so often vexes you is a physical infirmity with me. It is the failing of a mind not calculated to endure a great pressure of care, and so much do I feel the pressure I am under, so much is my mind darkened and ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields

... of that were plain enough; yet it was delicately fair all the same, and perhaps more than ever, with the heightened spirituality of the expression. The writing on her features, of love and purity, habitual self-devotion and self-forgetfulness, patience and sweetness, was so plain and so unconscious, that it made her a very rare subject of contemplation, and, as her companion thought, extremely lovely. Her attitude spoke the same unconsciousness; her dress was of the simplest description; her brown hair was tossed into ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner

... storm had grown terrific—the heavy clouds trailing to the earth and the lightning flashes lit up dusky corners. Evilena had proposed darkening the windows entirely, lighting the lamps to dispel the gloom, and dressing in their prettiest to drive away forgetfulness of the tragedy of the elements; it was Kenneth's last day at home; they must be gay though the ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan

... farther that the large Tower or Belfry was built by such a one, and the smaller Belfry was built by &c. &c.—Till human nature can stand no more of it; till human nature desperately take refuge in forgetfulness, almost in flat disbelief of the whole business, Monks, Monastery, Belfries, Carucates and all! Alas, what mountains of dead ashes, wreck and burnt bones, does assiduous Pedantry dig up from the Past Time, and name it History, and Philosophy of History; till, ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle

... for a great cause. That sacrifice is the one noble and chivalrous element which gives interest to war—the one thing that can be disentangled from its hideous associations, and can be transferred to higher regions of life. That spirit of lofty consecration and utter self-forgetfulness must be ours, if we would be Christ's soldiers. Our obedience will then be glad when we feel the force of, and yield to, that gentle, persuasive entreaty, 'I beseech you, brethren! by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice.' ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... cup, put it to his lips and he drank. Then the joy of life streamed in his blood; the whole world seemed to belong to him. "Why torment one's self? Every thing is made for our enjoyment and happiness! The stream of life is the stream of joy, and forgetfulness is felicity!" He looked at the young girl, it was Annette and then again not Annette; still less, an enchanted phantom, as he had named her, when he met her near Grindelwald. The girl on the mountain was fresh as the newly fallen snow, blooming ...
— The Ice-Maiden: and Other Tales. • Hans Christian Andersen

... Bliss, the residence of the witch Acras'ia, a beautiful and most fascinating woman. This lovely garden was situated on a floating island filled with everything which could conduce to enchant the senses, and "wrap the spirit in forgetfulness."—Spenser, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.

... bright fire, and a new book, proved too strong for her. The book was one of her favourite Indian stories, and she lost herself in the delightful depths of the "forest primeval" with an entire and blissful forgetfulness of England and common sense. But she roused herself, with a start of no little surprise, when her father suddenly ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 1 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill

... and brought too brief forgetfulness. It was not till the dull grey light of morning was glimmering through the blinds that Mr. Bultitude awoke ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey

... this while? He essayed speech; but the lines about his mouth were constricted, and his breath came in quivering gasps, as the vision of torture, suffered for honor's sake, rose up before him. Ah! if ever he had sinned,—and the temporary forgetfulness appeared such a little thing to Jack's generous ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas

... of immortality, an utter incapacity to change. As the act was, as the word had been spoken, so would act and word be for ever and for ever. And now this undying thing must be caged and cast about with the semblance of death and clouded over with the shadow of an unreal forgetfulness. Oh, it was bitter, very bitter! What would it be now to go away, quite away from him, and know him married to her own sister, the other woman with a prior right? What would it be to think of Bessie's sweetness slowly creeping ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard

... infinite satisfaction. He could sit for hours gazing at a solitary flower and philosophizing about the mysteries and riddles of being. A blue heron on a tiny crescent of sandy beach, a silvery splatter of flying fish, or a sunset of pearl and rose across the lagoon, could entrance him to all forgetfulness of the procession of wearisome days and of the ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London

... 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. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson

... self-conscious. This quality of Russian writers is evidently racial, for even in the most artful of them—Turgenev—it is as apparent as in the least sophisticated. It is part, no doubt, of their natural power of flinging themselves deep into the sea of experience and sensation; of their self-forgetfulness in ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy

... three 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

... what you'll do!" And with such passionate determination did she clutch and tug, never losing a grip of him somewhere, though George tried as much as he could, without hurting her, to wrench away—with such utter forgetfulness of her maiden dignity did she assault him, that she forced him, stumbling upward, to ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington

... the hearts in the house swell to the bursting-point, what went on in the shadowed souls and issued from them in part, in the self-forgetfulness of fear, or became a deed, a deed of desperation—all that may pass through the memory of the man with whom we have been occupied. It is thirty-one years today since he returned to his home town from ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various

... the last request, O Lord. I shall not ask any more: The tears do not dry up in the eyes of our old women crying for those who have perished. Take their memory away, O Lord, and give them strong forgetfulness. There are still other trifles, O Lord, but let the others pray whose turn has come ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev

... of her making my step light. I was going to be near her again, at least, if only for an hour; perhaps, whether I succeeded or failed, she would hear my name mentioned. Even that would be better than forgetfulness, and she was one to appreciate a deed like this. I should like to see her eyes when they told her—when they spoke my name. I wondered where Captain Le Gaire was, and whether he had been her escort back through ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish

... in wakeful restlessness, I turn me wearisome; while all around, All, all, save me, sink in forgetfulness; I only wake to watch the sickly taper Which lights me to my tomb.—Yes, 'tis the hand Of Death I feel press heavy on my vitals, Slow sapping the warm current of existence My moments now are few—the sand of life Ebbs fastly to its finish. Yet a little, And the last fleeting ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White

... all concerned if it had been carried out, and it was therefore fortunate that De Morgan was consulted in time. Mrs. De Morgan speaks of the consultation in these words: "My husband, who was very sensitive on such points, was charmed with Mrs. Fry's voice and manner as much as by the simple self-forgetfulness with which she entered into this business; her own very uncomfortable share of it not being felt as an element in the question, as long as she could be useful in promoting good or preventing mischief. I can see her now as she came into our room, took off her little round ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan

... "Yes,"—why, then he must go on, he must tell her something of what passed between Luttrell and himself, how he delivered his message and what answer he received. Let him wrap that answer up in words, however delicate and vague, she would see straight to the answer. Her heart would lead her there. To plead forgetfulness would be merely to acknowledge that he slighted her; and she would not believe him. So ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason

... snug corner where lay the remains of the nest in which he had been born. Winter, weary and monotonous to most of the wildlings of the field, passed quickly over his head. Scarce-broken sleep and forgetfulness, when skies are grey and tempests rage—such are Nature's gifts to the snake, the bee, and the flower, as well as to the squirrel in the wood and the vole in the burrow beneath the moss. Occasionally, it is true, when at noon the sun was bright and spring seemed to have come to ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees

... replenishment at which the saints refresh their parched throats. An acute sensitiveness to the suffering of others, without a corresponding power to reach the sources of comfort, leads to the abyss of madness. Nature imposes limits to sympathy in most minds, barriers of forgetfulness without which healthy thought is impossible. The danger to the mind of indulging in unlimited sympathy has been emphasized by the most divergent students of psychological law. Herbert Spencer analysed it with characteristic thoroughness. Nietzsche ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby

... position of the leaves not having been acquired through natural selection, from not being of any special importance to the plant. I well remember being formerly troubled by an analogous difficulty, namely, the position of the ovules, their anatropous condition, etc. It was owing to forgetfulness that I did not notice this difficulty in the 'Origin.' (Nageli's Essay is noticed in the 5th edition.) Although I can offer no explanation of such facts, and only hope to see that they may be explained, yet I hardly ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin

... of what you have thought is, I fancy, based on a strange forgetfulness of your former experience. If you have known Christ (whom to know is eternal life)—and that you have known him I am certain—can you really say that a few intellectual difficulties, nay, a few moral difficulties if you will, ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant

... the scourging of our sins. Flagellation is not of the body—it is of the soul. Remorse is as a scorpion-whip, and memory beats us with many stripes. The first sin that besets us is forgetfulness of God. Apathy creeps over the spirit, and sloth winds itself about our deeds. Nothing is more pathetic than the decline of the merely forgetful soul. "Be sleepless in the things of the spirit," says Pythagoras, "for sleep in ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown

... prepared supper. There was no reconciliation, at least on her side. She was not capable of reconciliation. Her temper exhausted itself gradually. With her the storm never broke up nobly and with magnificent forgetfulness into clear spaces of azure, with the singing of birds and with hot sunshine turning into diamonds every remaining drop of the deluge which had threatened ruin; the change was always rather to a uniformly obscured sky and a cold ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford

... time the dwarf had ceased to speak, Julian's desire of sleep had returned; and after a few glances around the apartment, which was still illuminated by the expiring beams of the holy taper, his eyes were again closed in forgetfulness, and his repose was not again disturbed in the course of ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott

... sun and shower Doth momently to fresher beauty rise. To us the leafless autumn is not bare, Nor winter's rattling boughs lack lusty green: Our summer hearts make summer's fullness where No leaf or bud or blossom may be seen: For nature's life in love's deep life doth lie, Love,—whose forgetfulness is beauty's death, Whose mystic key these cells of Thou and I Into the infinite freedom openeth, And makes the body's dark and narrow grate The ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard

... he came during the year of our acquaintance for counsel and kindness in all his many anxieties and griefs, he never spoke irreverently of any woman save one, and then only in my defense; and though I rebuked him for his momentary forgetfulness of the respect due to himself and to me, I could not but forgive the offense for the sake of the generous impulse which prompted it. Yet even were these sad rumors true of him, the wise and well-informed knew how to regard, as they would the ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various

... wisdom, doubted not compleating, before long, the subjection of her unfortunate tenderness. Nor was her task so difficult as she had feared; resolution, in such cases, may act the office of time, and anticipate by reason and self-denial, what that, much leas nobly, effects through forgetfulness and inconstancy. ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)

... boots were allowed to grow rusty and chins unshaven, as the boys gradually drank and worked themselves into a dumb forgetfulness of their ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton

... whack the dry stalks of mullen with his cane. I remember he let down some bars after a long walk and stepped into a smooth roadway. He stood resting a little while, his basket on the top bar, and then the moon that I had been watching went down behind the broad rim of his hat and I fell into utter forgetfulness. My eyes opened on a lovely scene at daylight Uncle Eb had laid me on a mossy knoll in a bit of timber and through an opening right in front of us I could see a broad level of shining water, and the great green mountain on the further shore ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller

... was looking at him in a strange silence; whatever might have been in the past there was no spell now in those glorious eyes which could dazzle her soul into forgetfulness; shade after shade of repressed emotion passed over her features as she gazed, leaving them at last white ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens

... ought not to have been out after nine o'clock, because my gating would not finish. But I must say that when the Subby sent for me, and I explained what had happened, he congratulated me on getting my blue, and said that under such exceptional circumstances he would excuse my forgetfulness. ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley

... confidence in you and talked frankly to you, as I never did to any one else. And you know I've had a hard time. I was never meant for the tiresome, lonely life I've had. I never wanted to be a pattern and model of usefulness and self-forgetfulness, but they would have me so, and I couldn't go out in the streets and tell them I was not. I've had to play the part till I'm tired. I've had to walk demurely, and talk and smile to people I despised, and do all sorts of miserable things. But I never pretended to you. You knew I was not satisfied ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 7 • Various

... conviction, I repeat to you in writing that Theodor Kullak's forgetfulness ought to be made good by his heirs. Otherwise it would be severely denounced as unfaithfulness to his position as an artist. A fortune of several millions gained by music-teaching ought not to remain ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated

... her task well in this instance, for she had thoroughly blasted his life! He would pretend to forget, but nevertheless he would see to it that she was undeceived, and that the injury she had done him remained an ever-present reproach to her. That would be his revenge. Real forgetfulness, of course, was out of the question. How could he assume such an attitude? As he pondered the question he remembered that there were artificial aids to oblivion. Ruined men invariably took to drink. Why shouldn't he attempt to drown his sorrows? After all, might there not be real and actual ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach

... evolvement. When it reaches the utmost height of spiritual capacity, and is strong enough to know and see and understand, then it will remember all from the beginning. Nothing can ever be forgotten, inasmuch as forgetfulness implies waste, and there is no waste in the scheme of the Universe. Every thought is kept for use,—every word, every sigh and tear is recorded. Life itself, in our limited view of it, can be continued indefinitely on this earth, if we use the means given to us to preserve ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli

... effected by presenting frequently in a day contrary ideas to shew the fallacy, or the too great estimation, of the painful ideas. 2dly. By change of place, and thus presenting the stimulus of new objects, as a long journey. 3dly. By producing forgetfulness of the idea or object, which causes their pain; by removing all things which recal it to their minds; and avoiding all conversation on similar subjects. For I suppose no disease of the mind is so perfectly cured by ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... excessive literary toil." As 'Ben Karshook's Wisdom,' though it has been reprinted in several quarters, will not be found in any volume of Browning's works, and was omitted from "Men and Women" by accident, and from further collections by forgetfulness, it may be fitly quoted here. Karshook, it may be added, is the Hebraic word for ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp

... that it not unfrequently leads to the imitation of the weaknesses as well as of the strength of the master. It is only such over-faithfulness which can account for a "strong mind really saturated with the historical sense" (p. 153) exhibiting the extraordinary forgetfulness of the historical fact of the existence of David Hume ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley

... morrow Maurice accompanied his grandmother, Bertha, and Count Tristan to the residence of the Marchioness de Fleury. Count Tristan's malaise evinced itself by his unusually fretful and preoccupied manner, his querulous tone, and a partial forgetfulness of those polite observances of which he was rarely oblivious. He allowed his mother to stand, looking at him in blind amazement, before he remembered to open the door; was very near passing out of the ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie

... body; it is my mind only that is ill at ease; my heart only that is sick—sorely sick. Here I shall find employment, and, I trust, partial forgetfulness. Put me to work at once; that will be my ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... 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 of ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse

... the country. Nor is the climate less favourable than the soil; for here an eternal spring and summer seem to have fixed their abode. No frost nor snow is ever known to chill the atmosphere, which is always perfumed with the smell of aromatic plants that grow on every side, and bring on a pleasing forgetfulness of human care. But, alas! these blessings, great as they may appear, produce the effect of curses upon the inhabitants. The ease and plenty which they enjoy, enervate their manners, and destroy all vigour both of body and mind. ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day

... cheap as that of animals—which has been characteristic of Spaniards of all 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, ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock

... first conscious thought of her since he had stepped out of the train, almost his first since leaving her at Fort Ellsworth. He was half shocked at his forgetfulness of such a jewel, so nearly his, the jewel so many other men wanted. He wanted her, too, desperately, now that the clouds had parted for an instant to remind him of the bright world where she ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson

... arrived safely at the door. He knocked loudly, rather enjoying the idea that the old fellow would be frightened at the sudden noise. He heard no movement in reply: all was silence in the cottage. Was the weaver gone to bed, then? If so, why had he left a light? That was a strange forgetfulness in a miser. Dunstan knocked still more loudly, and, without pausing for a reply, pushed his fingers through the latch-hole, intending to shake the door and pull the latch-string up and down, not doubting that the door was fastened. But, to his surprise, at this double motion the ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster

... need have told him; his action of forgetfulness had made him so angry with himself that he flushed through his tan. "I don't know what I am coming to!" he exclaimed, savagely. "Ah—I was not once like this!" Tears of vexation were ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy

... and asks the reason he knows not; what are those spreading streams, or who are they whose vast train fills the banks? Then lord Anchises: 'Souls, for whom second bodies are destined and due, drink at the wave of the Lethean stream the heedless water of long forgetfulness. These of a truth have I long desired to tell and shew thee face to face, and number all the generation of thy children, that so thou mayest the more rejoice with me in finding Italy.'—'O father, must we think that any souls travel hence into upper air, and return again to bodily fetters? why ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil

... uppermost in mind, would not the sight of human foot-tracks on the snow half way between the two camps have excited hope, instead of "suspicion," and prompted some of the party to pursue the lone wanderer with kindly intent? Does not each succeeding day's entry in that journal disclose the party's forgetfulness of its declared mission to the mountains? Can any palliating excuse be urged why those men did not share with Keseberg the food they had brought, instead of permitting him to continue that which famine had forced upon him, and which later ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton

... I'd give my heart's blood to subdue to a mood of womanly tenderness and dependence. Up to this, my position is that of a very humble courtier in the presence of a queen, and she takes care that by no momentary forgetfulness shall I lose sight of ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever

... money on all sides. She would have given her golden hair, her slender white fingers, her tiny feet, her life itself, in order to save her child. And she was as sincere in her despair and her love as in her unconscious forgetfulness. Baron Larrey returned to Paris, leaving my mother, Aunt Rosine, and the surgeon with me. Forty-two days later, mother took back in triumph to Paris the nurse, the foster-father, and me, and installed us in a little house at Neuilly, on the banks of the Seine. ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt

... resemblance, after all, betwixt the ignoble features of the ruined merchant and that majestic face upon the mountain-side. So the people ceased to honour him during his lifetime, and quietly consigned him to forgetfulness after his decease. Once in a while, it is true, his memory was brought up in connection with the magnificent palace which he had built, and which had long ago been turned into a hotel for the accommodation of strangers, multitudes of whom came, every summer, to visit that famous natural curiosity, ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various

... cause; burning with indignation at the wrongs she had suffered; thrilled with an adoring love for the idea she embodied; eager to make manifest this love at whatever cost of pain and sorrow and suffering to himself,—through all this the man never once was steeped in forgetfulness in the soldier; the divine passion of patriotism never once dulled the ache, or satisfied the desire, or answered the prayer, or filled the longing heart, that through the day marches and the night watches cried, and would not be ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson

... Joseph; but come with me and I'll tell thee much about him. No better shepherd than he ever ranged the hills. I wouldn't have thee forget, mate, another man said, that he's gone without leaving us his great cure for scab. True for thee, mate, answered the first, for a great forgetfulness has been on him this time past.... A great cure, certainly, which he might have left us. And the twain fell to discussing their several cures for scab. Another shepherd came by and passed the remark ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore

... his wounds, and no peace for his mind. Cosmopolitan, always, is sorrow; at home In all countries and lands, thriving well while we roam In vain efforts to slay it. Toil only, brings peace To the tempest tossed heart. What in travel Maurice Failed to find—self-forgetfulness—came with his work For the suffering poor in the ...
— Three Women • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... adequate return, and that she must have been disappointed in him in consequence. He extols her pleasant conversation, her active benevolence, her disposition to aid him in all his labors, and her noble forgetfulness of self, in ministering to his comfort, in sickness and imprisonment. "She was the meetest helper I could have had in the world," is his language. "If I spoke harshly or sharply, it offended her. If I carried it (as I am apt) with ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... God!" cried Colonel Sheraton; swinging his hands aloft, tears rolling down his old gray cheeks. "It is war! Now we may find forgetfulness!" ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough

... titles, or possessions, but from grace renewing and sanctifying the heart, and a life of true devotedness to Christ and his service. 3. We are taught to lay no stress on present prosperity, but to do God's work, looking for the recompense of reward which He gives. A noble forgetfulness of self, and mortification to the favour of the world, have characterized all Christ's most approved servants. Dr. Payson relates about himself, what has been experienced by many faithful men, "When I thought myself to be something, I never knew happiness of mind; since I came to feel myself ...
— The Life of James Renwick • Thomas Houston

... this forgetfulness, and there was the Dane gazing into the flames, and seeming heedless of all that was going on. Nor do I think that I had ever seen one look so sad as looked that homeless man, as he forgot the busy talk and movement around him in ...
— Wulfric the Weapon Thane • Charles W. Whistler

... rocky place a trout will dart out and catch his prey. A flutter at once passes through the whole school. Yet, strange to say, the trout will sometimes swim around such a body and either stupify them with fear, or hypnotize them into forgetfulness of their presence, for they will float quietly in the center of the mass, catching the minnows one by one as they need them without exciting the least fear or attention. The minnows generally remain in fairly shallow water, and keep so closely together that a line of demarcation is ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James

... magic circle. With a wrench that tore his very heart-strings he set his face down the road and followed submissively in the track of the Rat, while faint, thin little smells, still dogging his retreating nose, reproached him for his new friendship and his callous forgetfulness. ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame

... words. "Let me lay my head upon your breast;" and so he rested, now and then speaking lowly to himself, "It's only that I miss my mother; but Heaven's will be done." He repeated this many times, until the Heaven he obeyed sent him in its mercy forgetfulness, and his thoughts no longer wandered to his earthly home. I heard glad words feebly uttered as I bent over him—words about "Heaven—rest—rest"—a holy Name many times repeated; and then with a smile and a stronger voice, "Home! home!" And ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole

... 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 ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens

... the knowledge occur to the mind so as to occupy its powers of contemplation at the moment when the sight work is to be done, the mind retires inward, fixes itself upon the known fact, and forgets the passing visible ones; and a moment of such forgetfulness loses more to the painter than a day's thought can gain. This is no new or strange assertion. Every person accustomed to careful reflection of any kind, knows that its natural operation is to close his eyes to the external world. While he is ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin

... are shocked or frighted at seeing the improprieties and sins, which are openly countenanced. Alas! there are persons, doubtless (though God forbid it should be the case with any here present!), whose consciences have been so early trained into forgetfulness of religious duties, that they can hardly, or cannot at all, recollect the time I speak of; the time when they acted with the secret feeling that God saw them, saw all they did and thought. I will not fancy this to be the case with any who hear ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VII (of 8) • John Henry Newman

... friend the mocking-bird, neglecting his faithful wife and letting his home go to decay, kept dropping in, all hours of the day, tasting the berries' rank pulp, stimulating, stimulating, drowning care, you know,—"Lost so many children, and the rest gone off in ungrateful forgetfulness of their old hard-working father; yes;" and ready to sing or fight, just as any other creature happened not to wish; and going home in the evening scolding and swaggering, and getting to bed barely able to hang on to the roost. It would have been bad ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable

... twilight of the farther end of the barn, where he found the earthen floor bedded a foot deep with straw. He lay down here, drew straw over himself in lieu of blankets, and was soon absorbed in thinking. He had many griefs, but the minor ones were swept almost into forgetfulness by the supreme one, the loss of his father. To the rest of the world the name of Henry VIII. brought a shiver, and suggested an ogre whose nostrils breathed destruction and whose hand dealt scourgings and death; but to this boy the name brought only ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... that unfortunate volume, I had at first put off a little, and then a little longer, the answering of her last letter, because I was interested just then in writing well and not particularly interested in anything else; and I had finally approximated to forgetfulness of the ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al

... looked at each other with one of those sudden cravings for solitude and forgetfulness common to lovers. Ah! how sweet it would be to love one another there in the depths of that nook, so far away from everybody else! But they smiled. Was such a thing to be thought of? They had barely time to catch the train that was to take them back to Paris. And the old ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola

... form, but, that it would lead to false conclusions if we did not recollect that this destruction of the enemy's force is comprised in that object, and that this object is only a weak modification of it. Forgetfulness of this led to completely false views before the Wars of the last period, and created tendencies as well as fragments of systems, in which theory thought it raised itself so much the more above handicraft, the less it supposed itself to stand in ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz

... instantly uprooted, and dragged along to a second obstacle, a house, whose roof was carried off. At this moment the two cables of the anchors were broken without the voyagers being aware of it. Foreseeing the successive shocks that were about to ensue—the moment was critical—the least forgetfulness might cause death. To add to the difficulty, the balloon's inclined position did not permit of operating the ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon

... instances of forgetfulness on the part of some, that they have in keeping the yet unsullied reputation of the army, and that the duties exacted of us by civilization and Christianity are not less obligatory in the country of the ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones

... was generally profound, but he would sometimes discourse incoherently for a long while in his sleep. At six he would suddenly compose himself, even in the midst of an animated narrative or of earnest discussion, and he would lie buried in entire forgetfulness, in a sweet and mighty oblivion, until ten, when he would suddenly start up, and rubbing his eyes with great violence, and passing his fingers swiftly through his long hair, would enter at once into a vehement argument, or begin to recite verses, either of his own composition ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb

... to each man who was about to fire, especially Nicholls, the cook, with whom she seemed quite in love, patting him on the back, clapping her small hands, squeaking out her delight, and jumping about like a crow with a shirt on. While the fight was in progress, in the forgetfulness of his excitation, my black boy Tommy began to speak apparently quite fluently in their language to the two spies, keeping up a running conversation with them nearly all the time. It seemed that the celebrated saying of Talleyrand, "Language was only given to man to conceal his thought," ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles

... and sorrow, through the paths of service and suffering. Later in life John knew what the Master's words meant. He found his place nearest to Christ, but it was not on the steps of an earthly throne; it was a nearness of love, and the steps to it were humility, self-forgetfulness, and ministry. ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller

... careful of inflicting suffering. The full blood sings of nothing but itself. It is careless of others. It is careless of God, not malignantly cruel, nor deliberately atheistic, but selfish with a sort of self-absorption which is often, very gracious in its forms and infidel with a mere forgetfulness of God. Who of us does not know, and who of us, wavering between his standards and his feelings, has not very often found it hard to tell just how he ought to value the enthusiastic and arrogant self-sufficiency of ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser

... stirred her not. The deadliest fatigue was thus confessed in every language of the sleeping flesh. The traveller smiled grimly. As though he had looked upon a statue, he made a grudging inventory of her charms: the figure in that touching freedom of forgetfulness surprised him; the flush of slumber became ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson

... who, to dumb forgetfulness a prey, This pleasing anxious being e'er resign'd, Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day, Nor cast one ...
— Graded Memory Selections • Various

... The girl was half child, half woman, and the man grey and bearded, but with brave blue eyes. It was seventeen years since the night she had stolen across the way and talked with this man in his hour of terror, but time did not cloud the little Madonna's memory with the dust of forgetfulness. ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various

... be all right erelong, if you will only drop your morbidness!" But in all seriousness, can such bald animal talk as that be treated as a rational answer? To ascribe religious value to mere happy-go-lucky contentment with one's brief chance at natural good is but the very consecration of forgetfulness and superficiality. Our troubles lie indeed too deep for THAT cure. The fact that we CAN die, that we CAN be ill at all, is what perplexes us; the fact that we now for a moment live and are well is irrelevant to that perplexity. We need a life not correlated ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James

... thought his self-esteem suffered cruelly. He felt a natural impulse to spring into a carriage and drive to the dwelling of Eugenie Gontier, and there to seek forgetfulness. But he felt that his bitterness would make itself known even there, and that such a course would be another affront to the dignity of a woman of heart, whose loyalty to himself he ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... men, forgetfulness of good turns, defiling of souls, changing of kind, disorder in ...
— Deuteronomical Books of the Bible - Apocrypha • Anonymous

... noticed this untruth, and attributes it to mere forgetfulness. We leave it to him to reconcile his very charitable supposition with what he elsewhere says of the remarkable ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... Manicamp, saluting the princess, "let us bury this affair altogether in forgetfulness, for it will never be ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas

... found the paymaster wearily, anxiously patrolling his self-assumed post out beyond the westward wall. The presence of common danger, the staff official's forgetfulness of self and his funds in his determination to aid the wretched women whom he firmly believed to have been run off by the Apaches, had won from the sergeant the tribute of more respectful demeanor, even though he held the story of the raid ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King

... to improve this faculty. The clerk or employee [Transcriber's Note: The original text reads 'employe'] in receiving instructions from his principal should endeavor to impress every point clearly on his mind, and retain them there until they are carried out in action. Carelessness and forgetfulness often causes the discharge of otherwise worthy and competent young persons, as employers do not like to repeat ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs

... wearied in sitting up two nights, I could not give that good account of Mr. Coleman, which I did afterwards when I consulted my papers;' as if in giving the names of many meaner persons, he should from forgetfulness overlook one so considerable as Coleman. The testimony of Oates was confirmed by Bedlow, who did not hesitate to swear to any thing that the more inventive genius of his ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various

... being re-issued in modern spelling not too many books had actually been condemned as subversive—only a few works on history, politics, philosophy, and the like, together with some scientific texts restricted for security reasons; but one by one, the great old writings were sent to forgetfulness. ...
— Security • Poul William Anderson

... anything themselves against a woman, still they will be more likely to help than to hinder us, if I should need their assistance. Then, when the Egyptian is ruined, if you have done as I wish, the king will remember your sad pale face, your humility and forgetfulness of self. The Achaemenidae, and even the Magi, will beg him to take a queen from his own family; and where in all Persia is there a woman who can boast of better birth than you? Who else can wear the royal purple but ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... that dreadful day when Agag was murdered, and it was always before his eyes that he was doomed, and that there was another man in the land, who was to rule in his stead. I tried to appease him. I told him that life to all of us is short, that in the grave there is forgetfulness, and bade him drink wine, lie in my bosom, and shut out the morrow, but it was of no avail. There was nothing to be dreaded in the thought that some one would supplant him, and other men would have endured it in peace; ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford

... tasseled cap sat on a head which in every line and movement expressed defeat and disgrace. So they all listened who stood around; I read it as well as if I had heard the words they were hearing. I saw dejection, profound sorrow, absorbed attention, utter forgetfulness of present bodily discomfort. I noticed that one man who carried an umbrella had put it down, and stood listening in the rain. Occasionally the soldier raised his arm to eke out his words with a gesture; and then moved ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell



Words linked to "Forgetfulness" :   oblivion, blackout, forgetful, obliviousness, unawareness, unknowingness, amnesia, senior moment



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