Motivational Quotes

Memory

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

Best Quotes about Memory

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

Hubbard, Elbert

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

Sweet is the memory of past troubles.

Cicero, Marcus T.

Memory is the mother of all wisdom.

Aeschylus

A good memory is one trained to forget the trivial.

Fadiman, Clifton

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

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

Marquez, Gabriel Garcia

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

Benjamin, Walter

Don't remember what you can infer.

Tennant, Harry

10.

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

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.

Memory is the thing you forget with.

Chase, Alexander

13.

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

Rogers, Will

14.

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

15.

Paradoxically one of the greatest advantages of mind maps is that they are seldom needed again. The very act of constructing a map is itself so effective in fixing ideas in memory that very often a whole map can recalled without going back to it at all. A mind map is so strongly visual and uses so many of the natural functions of memory that frequently it can be simply read off in the mind's eye.

Russell, Peter

16.

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

Basile

17.

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

Smith, Alexander

18.

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

19.

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

Williams, Tennessee

20.

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

William Shakespeare

21.

You have to begin to lose your memory, if only in bits and pieces, to realize that memory is what makes our lives. Life without memory is no life at all, just as an intelligence without the possibility of expression is not really an intelligence. Our memory is our coherence, our reason, our feeling, even our action. Without it, we are nothing.

Bunuel, Luis

22.

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

Alexander Solzhenitsyn

23.

The palest ink lasts longer than the most retentive memory.

Proverb, Chinese

24.

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

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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

Connolly, Cyril

28.

We don't remember days; we remember moments.

Pavese, Cesare

29.

People with good memories seldom remember anything worth remembering.

30.

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

31.

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

32.

Forget those things that aren't worth remembering.

Foley, Tim

33.

That is my major preoccupation --memory, the kingdom of memory. I want to protect and enrich that kingdom, glorify that kingdom and serve it.

Wiesel, Elie

34.

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.

35.

In memory everything seems to happen to music.

Williams, Tennessee

36.

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

37.

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

Herbert, George

38.

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

39.

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

40.

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

Kempis, Thomas

41.

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

Pope, Alexander

42.

Of what significance are the things you can forget.

Thoreau, Henry David

43.

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

Friedrich Nietzsche

44.

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

Paul, Jean

45.

Memory is the scribe of the soul.

Aristotle

46.

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

Colton, Charles Caleb

47.

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

48.

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

49.

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

Rogers, Will

50.

Memories are all we really own.

Lieberman, Elias