Therefore, he made them all drink of the Water of
Oblivion and forget everything they had known, so that they became as simple and innocent as their King.
So that as Plato had an imagination, That all knowledge was but remembrance; so Solomon giveth his sentence, That all novelty is but
oblivion. Whereby you may see, that the river of Lethe runneth as well above ground as below.
Many Theresas have been born who found for themselves no epic life wherein there was a constant unfolding of far-resonant action; perhaps only a life of mistakes, the offspring of a certain spiritual grandeur ill-matched with the meanness of opportunity; perhaps a tragic failure which found no sacred poet and sank unwept into
oblivion. With dim lights and tangled circumstance they tried to shape their thought and deed in noble agreement; but after all, to common eyes their struggles seemed mere inconsistency and formlessness; for these later-born Theresas were helped by no coherent social faith and order which could perform the function of knowledge for the ardently willing soul.
As the supreme perfection and universality of the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey" cast into
oblivion whatever pre-Homeric poets had essayed, so these same qualities exercised a paralysing influence over the successors of Homer.
But the wet boots had at last suggested to Silas that the child had been walking on the snow, and this roused him from his entire
oblivion of any ordinary means by which it could have entered or been brought into his house.
For the rest, the waters of
oblivion had closed over the old golden days at Greenwater Broad.
The viceroy, disappointed in his scheme, vented all his rage upon Father James, whom the patriarch had given him as his confessor; the good man was carried, bound hand and foot, into the middle of the camp; the viceroy gave the first stab in the throat, and all the rest struck him with their lances, and dipped their weapons in his blood, promising each other that they would never accept of any act of
oblivion or terms of peace by which the Catholic religion was not abolished throughout the empire, and all those who professed it either banished or put to death.
The hunting season over, all past tricks and maneuvres are forgotten, all feuds and bickerings buried in
oblivion. From the middle of June to the middle of September, all trapping is suspended; for the beavers are then shedding their furs and their skins are of little value.
That night, la Esmeralda had fallen asleep in her cell, full of
oblivion, of hope, and of sweet thoughts.
This, reader, I will venture to say (and by how much the better man you are yourself, by so much the more will you be inclined to believe me), that I would rather have buried the sentiments of these two persons in eternal
oblivion, than have done any injury to either of these glorious causes.
There had been a period of repose, and he had sunk into
oblivion. He had completely forgotten what was going on now.
Here it was, he told me, that he saw for the first time that mortal enemy of the human race, and here, too, for the first time he declared to her his passion, as honourable as it was devoted, and here it was that at last Marcela ended by scorning and rejecting him so as to bring the tragedy of his wretched life to a close; here, in memory of misfortunes so great, he desired to be laid in the bowels of eternal
oblivion." Then turning to Don Quixote and the travellers he went on to say, "That body, sirs, on which you are looking with compassionate eyes, was the abode of a soul on which Heaven bestowed a vast share of its riches.