Motivational Quotes

Memory

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

Best Quotes about Memory

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 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

A good memory is one trained to forget the trivial.

Fadiman, Clifton

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

Fermi, Enrico

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

Coward, Noel

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

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

Mark Twain

The selective memory isn't selective enough.

Morrison, Blake

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

10.

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

11.

I'm still chasing girls. I don't remember what for, but I'm still chasing them.

Lewis, Joe E.

12.

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

Proverb, Persian

13.

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

Herbert, George

14.

Unless we remember we cannot understand.

Forster, Edward M.

15.

Never forget what you need to remember.

Bartley, Garrett

16.

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

Firmianus, Lactantius

17.

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

Connolly, Cyril

18.

Take only memories, leave nothing but footprints.

Seattle, Chief

19.

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

20.

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

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.

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

Fulghum, Robert

23.

One lives in the hope of becoming a memory.

Porchia, Antonio

24.

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

Proverb, Irish

25.

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

26.

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

Santmyer, Helen Hoover

27.

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

28.

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

William Shakespeare

29.

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

30.

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

31.

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

32.

Memory is the mother of all wisdom.

Aeschylus

33.

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

Pavese, Cesare

34.

The palest ink lasts longer than the most retentive memory.

Proverb, Chinese

35.

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

36.

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

Alexander Solzhenitsyn

37.

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

38.

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

Basile

39.

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

Michel de Montaigne

40.

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

41.

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

Kempis, Thomas

42.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

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.

In memory everything seems to happen to music.

Williams, Tennessee

45.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

46.

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

Rogers, Will

47.

Forget those things that aren't worth remembering.

Foley, Tim

48.

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

William Shakespeare

49.

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

50.

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