Memory is so corrupt that you remember only what you want to; if you want to forget about something, slowly but surely you do.
Interpretation
Memory can be selective, allowing us to remember what we choose and forget what we desire.
This quote by Stefan Zweig highlights the subjective nature of memory, suggesting that our thoughts and recollections are often influenced by our desires and intentions. It implies that we have the power to curate our memories, consciously choosing to focus on certain experiences while letting go of others, which can be both a blessing and a curse in navigating our past.
In practice
In a speech about the implications of trauma, one could quote Zweig to emphasize how individuals choose what to remember.
All my life I have been passionately interested in monomaniacs of any kind, people carried away by a single idea. The more one limits oneself, the closer one is to the infinite; these people, as unworldly as they seem, burrow like termites into their own particular material to construct, in miniature, a strange and utterly individual image of the world.
When they are preparing for war, those who rule by force speak most copiously about peace until they have completed the mobilization process.
Only ambition is fired by the coincidences of success and easy accomplishment but nothing is quite as splendidly uplifting to the heart as the defeat of a human being who battles against the invincible superiority of fate. This is always the most grandiose of all tragedies, one sometimes created by a dramatist but created thousands of times by life.
Now I am discovering the world once more. England has widened my horizon.
In history, the moments during which reason and reconciliation prevail are short and fleeting.
Only the person who has experienced light and darkness, war and peace, rise and fall, only that person has truly experienced life.
Who knows for what we live, and struggle, and die?... Wise men write many books, in words too hard to understand. But this, the purpose of our lives, the end of all our struggle, is beyond all human wisdom.
I'm still there, watching those possessed children, as far away from the mystery now as I was then. I've never written, though I thought I wrote, never loved, though I thought I loved, never done anything but wait outside the closed door.
I am sick to death of cleverness. Everybody is clever nowadays. You can't go anywhere without meeting clever people. The thing has become an absolute public nuisance. I wish to goodness we had a few fools left. ALGERNON: We have. JACK: I should extremely like to meet them. What do they talk about? ALGERNON: The fools? Oh! about the clever people of course. JACK: What fools.
I heard the old, old, men say 'all that's beautiful drifts away, like the waters.'
It is generally understood that men don't aspire after the absolute right, but only to do about as well as the rest of the world.
In any dispute, each side thinks it's in the right and the other side is demons.
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