Motivational Quotes

Memory

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

Best Quotes about Memory

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

We don't remember days; we remember moments.

Pavese, Cesare

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

Friedrich Nietzsche

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

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

Alexander Smith

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

Fulghum, Robert

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

Pope, Alexander

Observation is an old man's memory.

Swift, Jonathan

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

Michel de Montaigne

10.

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

11.

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

Rogers, Will

12.

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

13.

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

14.

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

15.

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

16.

Never forget what you need to remember.

Bartley, Garrett

17.

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

Hazlitt, William

18.

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

19.

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

20.

Unless we remember we cannot understand.

Forster, Edward M.

21.

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

Wilde, Oscar

22.

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

23.

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

24.

Sweet is the memory of past troubles.

Cicero, Marcus T.

25.

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

Coward, Noel

26.

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

Basile

27.

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

28.

Memory is the treasury and guardian of all things.

Cicero, Marcus T.

29.

Our memories are card indexes consulted and then returned in disorder by authorities whom we do not control.

Connolly, Cyril

30.

The memory of most men is an abandoned cemetery where lie, unsung and unhonored, the dead whom they have ceased to cherish. Any lasting grief is reproof to their forgetfulness.

Yourcenar, Marguerite

31.

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

Didion, Joan

32.

It is surprising how much of memory is built around things unnoticed at the time.

Kingsolver, Barbara

33.

We are able to find everything in our memory, which is like a dispensary or chemical laboratory in which chance steers our hand sometimes to a soothing drug and sometimes to a dangerous poison.

Proust, Marcel

34.

Of what significance are the things you can forget.

Thoreau, Henry David

35.

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

Dante Alighieri

36.

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

William Shakespeare

37.

That translucent alabaster of our memories.

Proust, Marcel

38.

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

39.

Don't remember what you can infer.

Tennant, Harry

40.

Memory is the scribe of the soul.

Aristotle

41.

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

42.

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

Paul, Jean

43.

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

44.

Contemporaries appreciate the person rather than their merit, posterity will regard the merit rather than the person.

Colton, Charles Caleb

45.

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

Campbell, Don

46.

Memory is the mother of all wisdom.

Aeschylus

47.

Memories are all we really own.

Lieberman, Elias

48.

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

Fermi, Enrico

49.

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

William Shakespeare

50.

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