Motivational Quotes

Memory

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

Best Quotes about Memory

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

Bunuel, Luis

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

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

Like ultraviolet rays memory shows to each man in the book of life a script that invisibly and prophetically glosses the text.

Benjamin, Walter

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

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

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

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

Alexander Solzhenitsyn

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

Proverb

10.

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

Kingsolver, Barbara

11.

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

12.

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

13.

Memories are all we really own.

Lieberman, Elias

14.

Creditors have better memories than debtors.

Benjamin Franklin

15.

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

Michel de Montaigne

16.

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

Hazlitt, William

17.

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

Didion, Joan

18.

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

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.

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

Smith, Alexander

21.

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

22.

People tend to remember my performances, not me.

Barkin, Ellen

23.

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

24.

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

Mark Twain

25.

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought I summon up remembrance of things past, I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste. Then can I drown an eye (unused to flow) For precious friends hid in death's dateless night, and weep afresh love's long since cancelled woe,and moan the expense of many a vanished sight. Then can I grieve at grievances foregone, and heavily from woe to woe tell over the sad account of fore-bemoaned moan, Which I new pay as if not paid before. But if the while I think on thee, dear friend, all losses are restored and sorrows end.

Shakespeare, William

26.

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

Basile

27.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

28.

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

29.

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

Alexander Smith

30.

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

31.

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

Firmianus, Lactantius

32.

Forget those things that aren't worth remembering.

Foley, Tim

33.

Take only memories, leave nothing but footprints.

Seattle, Chief

34.

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

35.

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

Dante Alighieri

36.

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

37.

This boy is dead now, I knew it before taking him in my arms, I can remember his face, his suffering, his voice.

Diana, Princess of Wales

38.

You can fall ill with just a memory.

Paolo Giordano

39.

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

Fermi, Enrico

40.

Memory is the thing you forget with.

Chase, Alexander

41.

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

Takayuki Ikkaku, Arisa Hosaka and Toshihiro Kawabata

42.

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

43.

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

William Shakespeare

44.

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

Kempis, Thomas

45.

Observation is an old man's memory.

Swift, Jonathan

46.

If I could remember your name, I'd ask you where I left my keys.

Bumper Sticker

47.

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

Coward, Noel

48.

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

49.

We have all forgot more than we remember.

Fuller, Thomas

50.

We don't remember days; we remember moments.

Pavese, Cesare