Motivational Quotes

Memory

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

- Hubbard, Elbert

Best Quotes about Memory

Memory always obeys the commands of the heart.

Rivarol, Antoine

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

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.

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

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

Alexander Solzhenitsyn

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

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

Rogers, Will

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

Basile

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

Alexander Smith

10.

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

Paul, Jean

11.

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

12.

That translucent alabaster of our memories.

Proust, Marcel

13.

In memory everything seems to happen to music.

Williams, Tennessee

14.

The selective memory isn't selective enough.

Morrison, Blake

15.

The advantage of a bad memory is that one enjoys several times the same good things for the first time.

Friedrich Nietzsche

16.

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

17.

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

Dante Alighieri

18.

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

19.

Memory is the treasury and guardian of all things.

Cicero, Marcus T.

20.

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

Firmianus, Lactantius

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.

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

Connolly, Cyril

23.

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

Colton, Charles Caleb

24.

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

25.

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

26.

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

Trachman, Jay

27.

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

28.

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

29.

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

Benjamin, Walter

30.

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

31.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

32.

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

33.

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

Coward, Noel

34.

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

Williams, Tennessee

35.

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

36.

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

37.

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

Smith, Alexander

38.

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

Proverb

39.

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

Johnson, Samuel

40.

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

William Shakespeare

41.

Memory is the scribe of the soul.

Aristotle

42.

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

Rogers, Will

43.

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

44.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

45.

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

Pavese, Cesare

46.

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

47.

The best memory is that which forgets nothing, but injuries. Write kindness in marble and write injuries in the dust.

Proverb, Persian

48.

Lord, keep my memory green.

Dickens, Charles

49.

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

Proverb, Irish

50.

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.