Motivational Quotes

Memory

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

Best Quotes about Memory

Lord, keep my memory green.

Dickens, Charles

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

Wilde, Oscar

Sweet is the memory of past troubles.

Cicero, Marcus T.

Every man's memory is his private literature.

Huxley, Aldous

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

Campbell, Don

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

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

Allen, Fred A.

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

Michel de Montaigne

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

10.

One lives in the hope of becoming a memory.

Porchia, Antonio

11.

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

Firmianus, Lactantius

12.

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

Mark Twain

13.

Memory is the treasury and guardian of all things.

Cicero, Marcus T.

14.

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

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.

Observation is an old man's memory.

Swift, Jonathan

17.

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

18.

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

19.

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

20.

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

Hazlitt, William

21.

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

22.

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

Herbert, George

23.

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

Lewis, Joe E.

24.

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

Alexander Smith

25.

The palest ink lasts longer than the most retentive memory.

Proverb, Chinese

26.

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

27.

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

Proverb, Persian

28.

Take only memories, leave nothing but footprints.

Seattle, Chief

29.

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

30.

The short memories of American voters is what keeps our politicians in office.

Rogers, Will

31.

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

32.

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

Basile

33.

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

34.

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

35.

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

36.

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

37.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

38.

That translucent alabaster of our memories.

Proust, Marcel

39.

Memories can be sad, but sometimes they can also save you.

Takayuki Ikkaku, Arisa Hosaka and Toshihiro Kawabata

40.

I would forget it fain; But, O, it presses to my memory, like damned guilty deeds to a sinners mind.

William Shakespeare

41.

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

Proverb

42.

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

43.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

44.

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

Lewis Carroll

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.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

47.

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

48.

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

49.

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

William Shakespeare

50.

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.