Citations:what has been seen cannot be unseen

English citations of what has been seen cannot be unseen

Proverb: "repulsive, disturbing, or horrific sights can never be erased from memory once they have been seen"

						1999	2009 2010 2011
ME «	15th c.	16th c.	17th c.	18th c.	19th c.	20th c.	21st c.

• 1999 — Estudos de literatura oral, Issue 5, page 46:

  Mansfield, whose garden and pear tree symbols evoke the Genesis story of the Fall of Man, itself associated with Bluebeard tales, as Maria Tatar has shown (Tatar, 1987; 159-60) depicts the tragically transforming power of unwanted vision. What has been seen cannot be unseen, what is known cannot become unknown again.

• 2009 — Shianne Minekime, Dreaming of Jeannie, AuthorHouse (2009), →ISBN, page 48:

  What has been seen, cannot be unseen; and what's been done is done.

• 2009 — Stéphane Megecaze, "Tron Legacy's stunning trailer", Bed Sheets, November 2009:

  Warning: What has been seen cannot be unseen! Tron Guy may stick in your mind and ruin all viewings of Tron and its sequel(s) forever. Just like that Star Wars kid did for Star Wars.

• 2010 — Brad Prager, "Suffering and Sympathy in Volker Schlöndorff's Der neunte Tag and Dennis Gansel's NaPolA", in Screening War: Perspectives on German Suffering (eds. Paul Cooke & Marc Silberman), Camden House (2010), →ISBN, page 196:

  At Dachau he was witness to real rather than abstract suffering; what has been seen cannot be unseen, nor can it be rationalized.

• 2011 — Rick Foot, "Thresholds in Improvisation: Freedom, the Eternal Present, and the Death of Jazz", in Thinking on Thresholds: The Poetics of Transitive Spaces (ed. Subha Mukherji), Anthem Press (2011), →ISBN, page 190:

  And just as what has been seen cannot be unseen (an inevitable effect of the internet), so what has been heard cannot be unheard.

• 2011 — "The dream and the darkly inspired", Warsaw Business Journal, 5 September 2011:

  Why is Techeye talking about this product rather than something involving a pink-kimono-wearing man? The answer is simple: we looked, and oh how we regret looking.

  "What has been seen cannot be unseen," as they say. But we sincerely hope that what has been seen will not be seen again in our next dream.

• 2011 — Pixie Truffle, "Heresy N Heelz @ Manchester Sept 2011", Gladstone Magazine, November 2011:

  Now don't get me wrong, there are those at these events that take your breath away for their beauty and others that take your breath for the audacity of their costume. Nevertheless, and despite always coming away from these events with two phrases ringing through my head, 'my goodness did you see how beautiful…." contrasted with "what has been seen, cannot be unseen,' you get to feel as though you are a part of something wonderful.

• 2011 — Jay Wallace, "Akira", BandWagon Magazine, December 2011:

  I went into Akira knowing it's considered amongst critics a landmark film for anime and the success of the genre in America, but I was also expecting the type of weirdness that has given anime an infamous reputation in pop culture. Don't know what I'm talking about? Google "hentai." …Actually, no, don't do that. Seriously. Don't fucking do that. What has been seen cannot be unseen.