Memory is a net; one finds it full of fish when he takes it from the brook; but a dozen miles of water have run through it without sticking.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809-1894) American poet, essayist, scholar

Article (1858-10), “Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table,” Atlantic Monthly
    (Source)

Collected in Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table, ch. 12 (1858).