Motivational Quotes

Memory

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

- Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

Best Quotes about Memory

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

Lord, keep my memory green.

Dickens, Charles

One lives in the hope of becoming a memory.

Porchia, Antonio

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

Rogers, Will

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

Marquez, Gabriel Garcia

Unless we remember we cannot understand.

Forster, Edward M.

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

Pope, Alexander

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

Take only memories, leave nothing but footprints.

Seattle, Chief

10.

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

11.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

12.

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

Hazlitt, William

13.

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

Friedrich Nietzsche

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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

Lewis Carroll

17.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

18.

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

19.

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

20.

People tend to remember my performances, not me.

Barkin, Ellen

21.

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

22.

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

Alexander Smith

23.

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

Coward, Noel

24.

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

Bunuel, Luis

25.

A man's real possession is his memory. In nothing else is he rich, in nothing else is he poor.

Smith, Alexander

26.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

27.

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

Michel de Montaigne

28.

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

29.

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

Johnson, Samuel

30.

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

Santmyer, Helen Hoover

31.

Creditors have better memories than debtors.

Benjamin Franklin

32.

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

33.

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

Allen, Fred A.

34.

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

Basile

35.

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

William Shakespeare

36.

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

Kempis, Thomas

37.

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

38.

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

39.

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

Campbell, Don

40.

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

41.

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

42.

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

Trachman, Jay

43.

Sweet is the memory of past troubles.

Cicero, Marcus T.

44.

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

Twain, Mark

45.

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