Motivational Quotes

Memory

A good memory is one trained to forget the trivial.

- Fadiman, Clifton

Best Quotes about Memory

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

Hazlitt, William

Our memory is like a shop in the window of which is exposed now one, now another photograph of the same person. And as a rule the most recent exhibit remains for some time the only one to be seen.

Proust, Marcel

Lord, keep my memory green.

Dickens, Charles

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

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

Rogers, Will

Of what significance are the things you can forget.

Thoreau, Henry David

Sweet is the memory of past troubles.

Cicero, Marcus T.

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

Kempis, Thomas

Memories are all we really own.

Lieberman, Elias

10.

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

11.

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

12.

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

13.

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

14.

A good memory is one trained to forget the trivial.

Fadiman, Clifton

15.

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

16.

When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not.

Mark Twain

17.

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

Michel de Montaigne

18.

Never forget what you need to remember.

Bartley, Garrett

19.

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

Coward, Noel

20.

Time -- our youth -- it never really goes, does it? It is all held in our minds.

Santmyer, Helen Hoover

21.

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

22.

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

Lewis, Joe E.

23.

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

Dante Alighieri

24.

The palest ink lasts longer than the most retentive memory.

Proverb, Chinese

25.

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

26.

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

27.

Take only memories, leave nothing but footprints.

Seattle, Chief

28.

Creditors have better memories than debtors.

Benjamin Franklin

29.

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

30.

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

Alexander Solzhenitsyn

31.

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

Proverb, Irish

32.

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

Herbert, George

33.

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

34.

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

William Shakespeare

35.

Memory: We retain: 10 percent of what we read; 20 percent of what we hear; 30 percent of what we see ?50 percent of what we hear and see; 70 percent of what we say; 90 percent of what we say and do

36.

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

Friedrich Nietzsche

37.

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

Twain, Mark

38.

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.

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.

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

41.

That translucent alabaster of our memories.

Proust, Marcel

42.

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

Kingsolver, Barbara

43.

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

44.

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

Trachman, Jay

45.

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

Didion, Joan

46.

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

Pope, Alexander

47.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

48.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

49.

The selective memory isn't selective enough.

Morrison, Blake

50.

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