Time, Aging & Legacy: Nostalgia Quotes

Discover a thoughtful selection of nostalgia quotes that evoke warm memories, the passage of time, and the echoes of aging and legacy. These reflections invite gentle remembrance without sentimentality, offering space to honor what was while appreciating what endures. Browse lines from writers, philosophers, and artists that balance longing with perspective. Whether you seek insight for a quiet moment or words for a milestone, this collection helps reconnect with meaningful past experiences and understand how they shape the present.

Similar topics:Aging Legacy & Remembrance Mortality Time Youth

"The Dick, Jane, and Spot primers have gone to that bookshelf in the sky. I have, in some ways, a tender feeling toward them, so I think it's for the best"

Chris Van Allsburg, Author

Chris Van Allsburg

"I've always been fascinated by numbers. Before I was seventeen years old, I had lived in twenty-one different houses. In my mind, each of those houses had a number"

Robert Indiana, Artist

Robert Indiana

"I can only note that the past is beautiful because one never realises an emotion at the time. It expands later, and thus we don't have complete emotions about the present, only about the past"

Virginia Woolf, Author

Virginia Woolf

"Does anyone remember laughter?"

Robert Plant, Musician

Robert Plant

"We were sharecroppers - we were a little bit of everything. We farmed and tried to make something"

Buck Owens, Musician

"The child is grown, the dream is gone, and I have become comfortably numb"

Pink Floyd, Musician

Pink Floyd

"God gave us memory so that we might have roses in December"

James M. Barrie, Playwright

James M. Barrie

"Nostalgia isn't what it used to be"

Peter De Vries, Novelist

"Perhaps even these things, one day, will be pleasing to remember"

Virgil, Writer

"I wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then"

Bob Seger, Musician

"The young have aspirations that never come to pass, the old have reminiscences of what never happened"

Hector Hugh Munro, Novelist

"Memory... is the diary that we all carry about with us"

Oscar Wilde, Dramatist

Oscar Wilde

"There is a child in every one of us who is still a trick-or-treater looking for a brightly-lit front porch"

Robert Brault, Philosopher

Robert Brault

"I think it is all a matter of love: the more you love a memory, the stronger and stranger it is"

Vladimir Nabokov, Novelist

Vladimir Nabokov

"I desire no future that will break the ties with the past"

George Eliot, Author

George Eliot

"There is no greater sorrow than to recall happiness in times of misery"

Dante Alighieri, Poet

Dante Alighieri

"Some memories are realities, and are better than anything that can ever happen to one again"

Willa Cather, Author

Willa Cather

"What I remember most about junior homecoming was my date getting sick afterwards. That kinda sucked. Then, senior year, someone got gum in her hair when we were dancing. She had to get one of the chaperones to take her to the office and cut up her hair. I felt really bad for her, but it worked out fine"

James Lafferty, Actor

James Lafferty

"Childhood is a promise that is never kept"

Ken Hill, Playwright

"Anyone who doesn't regret the passing of the Soviet Union has no heart. Anyone who wants it restored has no brains"

Vladimir Putin, President

Vladimir Putin

"I'm a Canadian citizen. But I always want to feel at home in Sri Lanka. I'm a member of both countries"

Michael Ondaatje, Author

"Nostalgia is not what it used to be"

Simone Signoret, Actress

"The 'good old times' - all times when old are good"

Lord Byron, Poet

Lord Byron

"In memory everything seems to happen to music"

Tennessee Williams, Dramatist

Tennessee Williams

"Looking back... it's hard to understand what all the fuss was about as things changed in just a few years. When you look at all the things that have happened in the world, it seems very small"

Zola Budd, Athlete

"The more enlightened our houses are, the more their walls ooze ghosts"

Italo Calvino, Journalist

Italo Calvino

"Nothing is more memorable than a smell. One scent can be unexpected, momentary and fleeting, yet conjure up a childhood summer beside a lake in the mountains"

Diane Ackerman, Poet

"Human memory is a marvelous but fallacious instrument. The memories which lie within us are not carved in stone; not only do they tend to become erased as the years go by, but often they change, or even increase by incorporating extraneous features"

Primo Levi, Scientist

"Memories, imagination, old sentiments, and associations are more readily reached through the sense of smell than through any other channel"

Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., Poet

Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

"When we recall the past, we usually find that it is the simplest things - not the great occasions - that in retrospect give off the greatest glow of happiness"

Bob Hope, Comedian

Bob Hope

"If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast"

Ernest Hemingway, Novelist

"In Tennessee where I grew up, there were animals, farms, wagons, mules"

Tina Turner, Musician

Tina Turner

"It was very difficult to startle or surprise someone with a particular sound during the family computer era"

Nobuo Uematsu, Composer

Nobuo Uematsu

"It's my memory, and what happened between that moment 10 or 15 years ago and now, there's a lot of gray area"

Tracey Emin, Artist

Tracey Emin

"All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was"

Toni Morrison, Novelist

Toni Morrison

"There's something about the sound of a train that's very romantic and nostalgic and hopeful"

Paul Simon, Musician

Paul Simon

"Time and memory are true artists; they remould reality nearer to the heart's desire"

John Dewey, Philosopher

John Dewey

"Well, most grown-ups forget what it was like to be a kid. I vowed that I would never forget"

Matt Groening, Cartoonist

Matt Groening

"The richness of life lies in memories we have forgotten"

Cesare Pavese, Poet

Cesare Pavese

"I've been in California for about 15 years now. You're always in your car and insulated. I miss New York so much"

Jimmy Smits, Actor

Jimmy Smits

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