Motivational Quotes

Memory

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

Best Quotes about Memory

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

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

You are told a lot about your education, but some beautiful, sacred memory, preserved since childhood, is perhaps the best education of all. If a man carries many such memories into life with him, he is saved for the rest of his days. And even if only one good memory is left in our hearts, it may also be the instrument of our salvation one day.

Dostoevsky, Fyodor

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

Bunuel, Luis

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

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.

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

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

Kempis, Thomas

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

Trachman, Jay

10.

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

Kingsolver, Barbara

11.

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

Coward, Noel

12.

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

Benjamin, Walter

13.

Never forget what you need to remember.

Bartley, Garrett

14.

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

Twain, Mark

15.

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

16.

In memory everything seems to happen to music.

Williams, Tennessee

17.

People tend to remember my performances, not me.

Barkin, Ellen

18.

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

19.

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

Herbert, George

20.

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

Didion, Joan

21.

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

Allen, Fred A.

22.

Memory is the mother of all wisdom.

Aeschylus

23.

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

Dante Alighieri

24.

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

25.

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

Michel de Montaigne

26.

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

Friedrich Nietzsche

27.

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

Basile

28.

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

29.

People with good memories seldom remember anything worth remembering.

30.

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

31.

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

32.

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

33.

Memory always obeys the commands of the heart.

Rivarol, Antoine

34.

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

35.

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

Lewis Carroll

36.

The selective memory isn't selective enough.

Morrison, Blake

37.

When you are right no one remembers; when you are wrong no one forgets.

Proverb, Irish

38.

Of what significance are the things you can forget.

Thoreau, Henry David

39.

Memory is the treasury and guardian of all things.

Cicero, Marcus T.

40.

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

Pope, Alexander

41.

Memories are all we really own.

Lieberman, Elias

42.

We don't remember days; we remember moments.

Pavese, Cesare

43.

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

44.

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

Pavese, Cesare

45.

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

46.

Don't remember what you can infer.

Tennant, Harry

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.

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

Hazlitt, William

49.

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

Alexander Smith

50.

That translucent alabaster of our memories.

Proust, Marcel