Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.
Oblivion
Oblivion is not to be hired.
Sir Thomas Browne—Hydriotaphia. Ch. V.
For those sacred powers
Tread on oblivion: no desert of ours
Can be entombed in their celestial breasts.
Wm. Browne—Britannia’s Pastorals. Bk. III. Song II. St. 23.
It is not in the storm nor in the strife
We feel benumb’d, and wish to be no more,
But in the after-silence on the shore,
When all is lost, except a little life.
Byron—Lines on Hearing that Lady Byron was Ill. L. 9.
Without oblivion, there is no remembrance possible. When both oblivion and memory are wise, when the general soul of man is clear, melodious, true, there may come a modern Iliad as memorial of the Past.
Carlyle—Cromwell’s Letters and Speeches. Introduction. Ch. I.
And o’er the past oblivion stretch her wing.
Homer—Odyssey. Bk. XXIV. L. 557. Pope’s trans.
He shall return no more to his house, neither shall his place know him any more.
Job. VII. 10.
Injuriarum remedium est oblivio.
Oblivion is the remedy for injuries.
Seneca—Epistles. 94. Quoting from an old poet, also found in Syrus.
What’s past and what’s to come is strew’d with husks
And formless ruin of oblivion.
Troilus and Cressida. Act IV. Sc. 5. L. 166.
Eo magis præfulgebant quod non videbantur.
They shone forth the more that they were not seen.
Tacitus. Adapted from Annals. Bk. III. 76.
But from your mind’s chilled sky
It needs must drop, and lie with stiffened wings
Among your soul’s forlornest things;
A speck upon your memory, alack!
A dead fly in a dusty window-crack.
Francis Thompson—“Manus Animam Pinxit.” St. 2.