Motivational Quotes

Memory

Memory is not an instrument for exploring the past but its theatre. It is the medium of past experience, as the ground is the medium in which dead cities lie interred.

- Benjamin, Walter

Best Quotes about Memory

In endowing us with memory, nature has revealed to us a truth utterly unimaginable to the unreflective creation, the truth of immortality. The most ideal human passion is love, which is also the most absolute and animal and one of the most ephemeral.

Santayana, George

The effectiveness of our memory banks is determined not by the total number of facts we take in, but the number we wish to reject.

Wynne-Tyson, Jon

Sweet is the memory of past troubles.

Cicero, Marcus T.

When one of these flashbacks was reported to me by a conscious patient, I was incredulous. For example, when a mother told me she was suddenly aware, as my electrode touched the cortex, of being in the kitchen listening to the voice of her little boy who was playing outside in the yard.

Penfield, Wilder

What is read twice is usually remembered more than what is once written.

Johnson, Samuel

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.

Levi, Primo

Life is all memory, except for the one present moment that goes by you so quickly you hardly catch it going.

Williams, Tennessee

I always have trouble remembering three things: faces, names, and -- I can't remember what the third thing is.

Allen, Fred A.

In memory everything seems to happen to music.

Williams, Tennessee

10.

A man's real possession is his memory. In nothing else is he rich, in nothing else is he poor.

Smith, Alexander

11.

The palest ink lasts longer than the most retentive memory.

Proverb, Chinese

12.

We have all forgot more than we remember.

Fuller, Thomas

13.

A man of great memory without learning hath a rock and a spindle and no staff to spin.

Herbert, George

14.

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

Wilde, Oscar

15.

The memory represents to us not what we choose but what it pleases.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

16.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

17.

If I could remember the names of all these particles, I'd be a botanist.

Fermi, Enrico

18.

But each day brings its petty dust our soon-choked souls to fill, and we forget because we must, and not because we will.

Arnold, Matthew

19.

I would forget it fain; But, O, it presses to my memory, like damned guilty deeds to a sinners mind.

William Shakespeare

20.

People tend to remember my performances, not me.

Barkin, Ellen

21.

Memory moderates prosperity, decreases adversity, controls youth and delights old age.

Firmianus, Lactantius

22.

A good memory is one trained to forget the trivial.

Fadiman, Clifton

23.

The light of memory, or rather the light that memory lends to things, is the palest light of all. I am not quite sure whether I am dreaming or remembering, whether I have lived my life or dreamed it. Just as dreams do, memory makes me profoundly aware of the unreality, the evanescence of the world, a fleeting image in the moving water.

Ionesco, Eugene

24.

I can only wait for the final amnesia, the one that can erase an entire life.

Bunuel, Luis

25.

Memories are all we really own.

Lieberman, Elias

26.

Leftovers in their less visible form are called memories. Stored in the refrigerator of the mind and the cupboard of the heart.

Fulghum, Robert

27.

The short memories of American voters is what keeps our politicians in office.

Rogers, Will

28.

Be careful about lending a friend money. It may damage her memory.

29.

Own only what you can carry with you; know language, know countries, know people. Let your memory be your travel bag.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn

30.

Though yet of Hamlet our dear brother's death the memory be green.

William Shakespeare

31.

Our moments of inspiration are not lost though we have no particular poem to show for them; for those experiences have left an indelible impression, and we are ever and anon reminded of them.

Thoreau, Henry David

32.

The memory should be specially taxed in youth, since it is then that it is strongest and most tenacious. But in choosing the things that should be committed to memory the utmost care and forethought must be exercised; as lessons well learnt in youth are never forgotten.

Arthur Schopenhauer

33.

This boy is dead now, I knew it before taking him in my arms, I can remember his face, his suffering, his voice.

Diana, Princess of Wales

34.

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought I summon up remembrance of things past, I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste. Then can I drown an eye (unused to flow) For precious friends hid in death's dateless night, and weep afresh love's long since cancelled woe,and moan the expense of many a vanished sight. Then can I grieve at grievances foregone, and heavily from woe to woe tell over the sad account of fore-bemoaned moan, Which I new pay as if not paid before. But if the while I think on thee, dear friend, all losses are restored and sorrows end.

Shakespeare, William

35.

Lord, keep my memory green.

Dickens, Charles

36.

Of what significance are the things you can forget.

Thoreau, Henry David

37.

Our memory is like a shop in the window of which is exposed now one, now another photograph of the same person. And as a rule the most recent exhibit remains for some time the only one to be seen.

Proust, Marcel

38.

Don't remember what you can infer.

Tennant, Harry

39.

The secret of a good memory is attention, and attention to a subject depends upon our interest in it. We rarely forget that which has made a deep impression on our minds.

Tryon Edwards

40.

A retentive memory may be a good thing, but the ability to forget is the true token of greatness.

Hubbard, Elbert

41.

Memory is the only paradise from which we cannot be driven.

Paul, Jean

42.

The advantage of a bad memory is that one enjoys several times the same good things for the first time.

Friedrich Nietzsche

43.

The best memory is that which forgets nothing, but injuries. Write kindness in marble and write injuries in the dust.

Proverb, Persian

44.

The selective memory isn't selective enough.

Morrison, Blake

45.

Forget those things that aren't worth remembering.

Foley, Tim

46.

For the sense of smell, almost more than any other, has the power to recall memories and it is a pity that you use it so little.

Rachel Carson

47.

We don't remember days; we remember moments.

Pavese, Cesare

48.

People with good memories seldom remember anything worth remembering.

49.

It's a pleasure to share one's memories. Everything remembered is dear, endearing, touching, precious. At least the past is safe --though we didn't know it at the time. We know it now. Because it's in the past; because we have survived.

Sontag, Susan

50.

Memories can be sad, but sometimes they can also save you.

Takayuki Ikkaku, Arisa Hosaka and Toshihiro Kawabata