Motivational Quotes

Memory

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

- Rogers, Will

Best Quotes about Memory

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

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

Take only memories, leave nothing but footprints.

Seattle, Chief

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

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

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

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.

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

Forget those things that aren't worth remembering.

Foley, Tim

10.

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

11.

The selective memory isn't selective enough.

Morrison, Blake

12.

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

13.

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

William Shakespeare

14.

People tend to remember my performances, not me.

Barkin, Ellen

15.

Our memories are card indexes consulted and then returned in disorder by authorities whom we do not control.

Connolly, Cyril

16.

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

17.

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

Coward, Noel

18.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

19.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

20.

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

Firmianus, Lactantius

21.

We don't remember days; we remember moments.

Pavese, Cesare

22.

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

23.

Don't remember what you can infer.

Tennant, Harry

24.

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

William Shakespeare

25.

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

Herbert, George

26.

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

27.

Observation is an old man's memory.

Swift, Jonathan

28.

Of what significance are the things you can forget.

Thoreau, Henry David

29.

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

Kempis, Thomas

30.

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

Fermi, Enrico

31.

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

32.

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

Williams, Tennessee

33.

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

34.

Never forget what you need to remember.

Bartley, Garrett

35.

Every man's memory is his private literature.

Huxley, Aldous

36.

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

Basile

37.

Memory always obeys the commands of the heart.

Rivarol, Antoine

38.

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

39.

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

Paul, Jean

40.

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

41.

Memory is the thing you forget with.

Chase, Alexander

42.

Memory is the scribe of the soul.

Aristotle

43.

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

Dante Alighieri

44.

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