Motivational Quotes

Memory

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

- Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

Best Quotes about Memory

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

Pavese, Cesare

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

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

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

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

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

Kingsolver, Barbara

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

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

Connolly, Cyril

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

10.

One lives in the hope of becoming a memory.

Porchia, Antonio

11.

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

Proverb

12.

Forget those things that aren't worth remembering.

Foley, Tim

13.

Never forget what you need to remember.

Bartley, Garrett

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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

17.

People with good memories seldom remember anything worth remembering.

18.

Sweet is the memory of past troubles.

Cicero, Marcus T.

19.

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

Pope, Alexander

20.

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

21.

We don't remember days; we remember moments.

Pavese, Cesare

22.

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

23.

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

24.

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

Proverb, Persian

25.

A good memory is one trained to forget the trivial.

Fadiman, Clifton

26.

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

Bunuel, Luis

27.

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

Johnson, Samuel

28.

Memories are all we really own.

Lieberman, Elias

29.

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

Firmianus, Lactantius

30.

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

Allen, Fred A.

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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

34.

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

Marquez, Gabriel Garcia

35.

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

Alexander Smith

36.

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

Twain, Mark

37.

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

Paul, Jean

38.

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

39.

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

40.

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

41.

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

Coward, Noel

42.

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

Colton, Charles Caleb

43.

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