Motivational Quotes

Memory

Why is it that our memory is good enough to retain the least triviality that happens to us, and yet not good enough to recollect how often we have told it to the same person?

- Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Best Quotes about Memory

Memory always obeys the commands of the heart.

Rivarol, Antoine

The heart's memory eliminates the bad and magnifies the good.

Marquez, Gabriel Garcia

It is said that God gave us memory so we could have roses in winter. But it is also true that without memory we could not have self in any season. The more memories you have, the more you have. That is why, as Swift said, No wise man ever wished to be younger.

Will, George F.

I have a memory like an elephant. In fact, elephants often consult me.

Coward, Noel

That translucent alabaster of our memories.

Proust, Marcel

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

Paul, Jean

A good memory is one trained to forget the trivial.

Fadiman, Clifton

Every man's memory is his private literature.

Huxley, Aldous

The charm, one might say the genius of memory, is that it is choosy, chancy, and temperamental: it rejects the edifying cathedral and indelibly photographs the small boy outside, chewing a hunk of melon in the dust.

Bowen, Elizabeth

10.

Never forget what you need to remember.

Bartley, Garrett

11.

People tend to remember my performances, not me.

Barkin, Ellen

12.

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

Rogers, Will

13.

When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not.

Mark Twain

14.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

15.

The more connections that can be made in the brain, the more integrated the experience is within memory.

Campbell, Don

16.

Of what significance are the things you can forget.

Thoreau, Henry David

17.

You can fall ill with just a memory.

Paolo Giordano

18.

The act of smelling something, anything, is remarkably like the act of thinking. Immediately at the moment of perception, you can feel the mind going to work, sending the odor around from place to place, setting off complex repertories through the brain, polling one center after another for signs of re recognition, for old memories and old connection.

Thomas, Lewis

19.

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

Bunuel, Luis

20.

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

William Shakespeare

21.

To be remembered after we are dead, is but poor recompense for being treated with contempt while we are living.

Hazlitt, William

22.

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

Alexander Solzhenitsyn

23.

Memory is the cabinet of the imagination, the treasury of reason, the registry of conscience, and, the council chamber of thought.

Basile

24.

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

Williams, Tennessee

25.

Memory: We retain: 10 percent of what we read; 20 percent of what we hear; 30 percent of what we see ?50 percent of what we hear and see; 70 percent of what we say; 90 percent of what we say and do

26.

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

Allen, Fred A.

27.

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

28.

Like ultraviolet rays memory shows to each man in the book of life a script that invisibly and prophetically glosses the text.

Benjamin, Walter

29.

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

30.

It is singular how soon we lose the impression of what ceases to be constantly before us. A year impairs, a luster obliterates. There is little distinct left without an effort of memory, then indeed the lights are rekindled for a moment --but who can be sure that the Imagination is not the torch-bearer?

Byron, Lord

31.

[Memory is] a man's real possession...In nothing else is he rich, in nothing else is he poor.

Alexander Smith

32.

One must have a good memory to be able to keep the promises one makes.

Friedrich Nietzsche

33.

The more a man can forget, the greater the number of metamorphoses which his life can undergo, the more he can remember the more divine his life becomes.

Kierkegaard, S°ren

34.

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

35.

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

Wilde, Oscar

36.

People with good memories seldom remember anything worth remembering.

37.

We don't remember days; we remember moments.

Pavese, Cesare

38.

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

39.

If I could remember your name, I'd ask you where I left my keys.

Bumper Sticker

40.

Unless we remember we cannot understand.

Forster, Edward M.

41.

Remember, your prerogative is to govern, and not to serve the things of this world.

Kempis, Thomas

42.

Why is our memory good enough to recall to the last detail things that have happened to us, yet not good enough to recall how often we have told them to the same person.

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

43.

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

Firmianus, Lactantius

44.

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

Fulghum, Robert

45.

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

46.

There is no greater sorrow than to recall happiness in times of misery.

Dante Alighieri

47.

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

48.

People may correctly remember the events of twenty years ago (a remarkable feat), but who remembers his fears, his disgusts, his tone of voice? It is like trying to bring back the weather of that time.

Gellhorn, Martha

49.

In memory everything seems to happen to music.

Williams, Tennessee

50.

If you are speaking the truth you don't have to remember anything.

Twain, Mark