memory

1.

One lives in the hope of becoming a memory.

- Porchia, Antonio

2.

MONUMENT, n. A structure intended to commemorate something which either needs no commemoration or cannot be commemorated. The bones of Agammemnon are a show, And ruined is his royal monument, but Agammemnon's fame suffers no diminution in consequence. The monument custom has its _reductiones ad absurdum_ in monuments "to the unknown dead" -- that is to say, monuments to perpetuate the memory of those who have left no memory.

- Ambrose Bierce

3.

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

- Colton, Charles Caleb

4.

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

5.

Memory feeds imagination.

- Amy Tan

6.

The aim of education should be to teach us rather how to think, than what to think -- rather to improve our minds, so as to enable us to think for ourselves, than to load the memory with the thoughts of other men.

- Dewey, John

7.

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

- Fermi, Enrico

8.

Study without desire spoils the memory, and it retains nothing that it takes in.

- Leonardo da Vinci

9.

People tend to remember my performances, not me.

- Barkin, Ellen

10.

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

11.

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

12.

We are made happy when reason can discover no occasion for it. The memory of some past moments is more persuasive than the experience of present ones. There have been visions of such breadth and brightness that these motes were invisible in their light.

- Thoreau, Henry David

13.

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

14.

He is a benefactor of mankind who contracts the great rules of life into short sentences, that may be easily impressed on the memory, and so recur habitually to the mind.

- Samuel Johnson

15.

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

- Paul, Jean

16.

I was asked to memorize what I did not understand; and, my memory being so good, it refused to be insulted in that manner.

- Crowley, Aleister

17.

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

18.

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

19.

Of what significance are the things you can forget.

- Thoreau, Henry David

20.

Never forget what you need to remember.

- Bartley, Garrett