Motivational Quotes

Memory

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

- Herbert, George

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

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

Santmyer, Helen Hoover

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

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

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

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

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

Lord, keep my memory green.

Dickens, Charles

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

10.

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

11.

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

12.

We do not remember days, we remember moments. The richness of life lies in memories we have forgotten.

Pavese, Cesare

13.

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

14.

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

Paul, Jean

15.

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

16.

Leftovers in their less visible form are called memories. Stored in the refrigerator of the mind and the cupboard of the heart.

Fulghum, Robert

17.

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

18.

That translucent alabaster of our memories.

Proust, Marcel

19.

You can fall ill with just a memory.

Paolo Giordano

20.

Of what significance are the things you can forget.

Thoreau, Henry David

21.

Observation is an old man's memory.

Swift, Jonathan

22.

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

Lewis Carroll

23.

Never forget what you need to remember.

Bartley, Garrett

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.

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

Kingsolver, Barbara

26.

Creditors have better memories than debtors.

Benjamin Franklin

27.

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

Johnson, Samuel

28.

We don't remember days; we remember moments.

Pavese, Cesare

29.

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

30.

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

31.

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

32.

The selective memory isn't selective enough.

Morrison, Blake

33.

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

Campbell, Don

34.

Memory is the mother of all wisdom.

Aeschylus

35.

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

36.

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

37.

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.

38.

Memory is the treasury and guardian of all things.

Cicero, Marcus T.

39.

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

Wilde, Oscar

40.

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

Michel de Montaigne

41.

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