Motivational Quotes

Memory

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

Best Quotes about Memory

You can fall ill with just a memory.

Paolo Giordano

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

Benjamin, Walter

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

Alexander Solzhenitsyn

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

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

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

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

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

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

10.

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

Campbell, Don

11.

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

Wilde, Oscar

12.

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

13.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

14.

A good memory is one trained to forget the trivial.

Fadiman, Clifton

15.

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

16.

Forget those things that aren't worth remembering.

Foley, Tim

17.

Memory is like a purse, if it be over-full that it cannot shut, all will drop out of it. Take heed of a gluttonous curiosity to feed on many things, lest the greediness of the appetite of thy memory spoil the digestion thereof.

Fuller, Thomas

18.

People with good memories seldom remember anything worth remembering.

19.

Memory is the scribe of the soul.

Aristotle

20.

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

Trachman, Jay

21.

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

22.

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

23.

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

24.

Creditors have better memories than debtors.

Benjamin Franklin

25.

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

Michel de Montaigne

26.

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

William Shakespeare

27.

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

28.

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

29.

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

Johnson, Samuel

30.

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

Coward, Noel

31.

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

Twain, Mark

32.

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

Friedrich Nietzsche

33.

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

Pavese, Cesare

34.

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

Fermi, Enrico

35.

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

Paul, Jean

36.

People tend to remember my performances, not me.

Barkin, Ellen

37.

Never forget what you need to remember.

Bartley, Garrett

38.

This boy is dead now, I knew it before taking him in my arms, I can remember his face, his suffering, his voice.

Diana, Princess of Wales

39.

Every man's memory is his private literature.

Huxley, Aldous

40.

Take only memories, leave nothing but footprints.

Seattle, Chief

41.

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

Williams, Tennessee

42.

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

43.

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

44.

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

Marquez, Gabriel Garcia

45.

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

46.

The palest ink lasts longer than the most retentive memory.

Proverb, Chinese

47.

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

48.

I'm still chasing girls. I don't remember what for, but I'm still chasing them.

Lewis, Joe E.

49.

Of what significance are the things you can forget.

Thoreau, Henry David

50.

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