Motivational Quotes

Memory

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

- Herbert, George

Best Quotes about Memory

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

Hubbard, Elbert

Paradoxically one of the greatest advantages of mind maps is that they are seldom needed again. The very act of constructing a map is itself so effective in fixing ideas in memory that very often a whole map can recalled without going back to it at all. A mind map is so strongly visual and uses so many of the natural functions of memory that frequently it can be simply read off in the mind's eye.

Russell, Peter

If any one faculty of our nature may be called more wonderful than the rest, I do think it is memory. There seems something more speakingly incomprehensible in the powers, the failures, the inequalities of memory, than in any other of our intelligences. The memory is sometimes so retentive, so serviceable, so obedient; at others, so bewildered and so weak; and at others again, so tyrannic, so beyond control! We are, to be sure, a miracle every way; but our powers of recollecting and of forgetting do seem peculiarly past finding out.

Jane Austen

A good memory is one trained to forget the trivial.

Fadiman, Clifton

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

Paul, Jean

Memory is the thing you forget with.

Chase, Alexander

The selective memory isn't selective enough.

Morrison, Blake

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

Those who cannot remember the past will spend a lot of time looking for their cars in mall parking lots.

Trachman, Jay

10.

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

Mark Twain

11.

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

12.

As with most fine things, chocolate has its season. There is a simple memory aid that you can use to determine whether it is the correct time to order chocolate dishes: any month whose name contains the letter A, E, or U is the proper time for chocolate.

Boynton, Sandra

13.

You have to begin to lose your memory, if only in bits and pieces, to realize that memory is what makes our lives. Life without memory is no life at all, just as an intelligence without the possibility of expression is not really an intelligence. Our memory is our coherence, our reason, our feeling, even our action. Without it, we are nothing.

Bunuel, Luis

14.

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

15.

Never forget what you need to remember.

Bartley, Garrett

16.

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

Marquez, Gabriel Garcia

17.

Remembrance and reflection how allied. What thin partitions divides sense from thought.

Pope, Alexander

18.

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

Alexander Smith

19.

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

20.

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

21.

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

22.

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

Williams, Tennessee

23.

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

Smith, Alexander

24.

The palest ink lasts longer than the most retentive memory.

Proverb, Chinese

25.

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought I summon up remembrance of things past, I sigh the lack of many things I sought, And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste.

William Shakespeare

26.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

27.

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

Bumper Sticker

28.

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

Rogers, Will

29.

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

30.

Memory always obeys the commands of the heart.

Rivarol, Antoine

31.

When wasteful war shall statues overturn, And broils root out the work of masonry, Nor Mars his sword nor wars quick fire shall burn The living record of your memory.

William Shakespeare

32.

We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget.

Didion, Joan

33.

We do not remember days, we remember moments. The richness of life lies in memories we have forgotten.

Pavese, Cesare

34.

Every man's memory is his private literature.

Huxley, Aldous

35.

We don't remember days; we remember moments.

Pavese, Cesare

36.

He who is not very strong in memory should not meddle with lying.

Michel de Montaigne

37.

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

Benjamin, Walter

38.

You never know how much a man can't remember until he is called as a witness.

Rogers, Will

39.

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

40.

One lives in the world's memory only by what they have done in the world's behalf.

Proverb

41.

It's a poor sort of memory that only works backward.

Lewis Carroll

42.

We have all forgot more than we remember.

Fuller, Thomas

43.

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

44.

Creditors have better memories than debtors.

Benjamin Franklin

45.

For the memory of love is sweet, though the love itself were in vain. And what I have lost of pleasure, assuage what I find of pain.

Lyster

46.

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

47.

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

48.

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.

49.

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

William Shakespeare

50.

That is my major preoccupation --memory, the kingdom of memory. I want to protect and enrich that kingdom, glorify that kingdom and serve it.

Wiesel, Elie