Motivational Quotes

Memory

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

- Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

Best Quotes about Memory

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

Fulghum, Robert

One lives in the hope of becoming a memory.

Porchia, Antonio

Memory is not an instrument for exploring the past but its theatre. It is the medium of past experience, as the ground is the medium in which dead cities lie interred.

Benjamin, Walter

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

Colton, Charles Caleb

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

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

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

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought I summon up remembrance of things past, I sigh the lack of many things I sought, And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste.

William Shakespeare

We have all forgot more than we remember.

Fuller, Thomas

10.

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

11.

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

Paul, Jean

12.

A good memory is one trained to forget the trivial.

Fadiman, Clifton

13.

You are told a lot about your education, but some beautiful, sacred memory, preserved since childhood, is perhaps the best education of all. If a man carries many such memories into life with him, he is saved for the rest of his days. And even if only one good memory is left in our hearts, it may also be the instrument of our salvation one day.

Dostoevsky, Fyodor

14.

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

Rogers, Will

15.

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

16.

Never forget what you need to remember.

Bartley, Garrett

17.

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

18.

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

Coward, Noel

19.

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

Didion, Joan

20.

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

Marquez, Gabriel Garcia

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.

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

Fermi, Enrico

23.

That translucent alabaster of our memories.

Proust, Marcel

24.

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

William Shakespeare

25.

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

26.

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

Pavese, Cesare

27.

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.

28.

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

Friedrich Nietzsche

29.

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

30.

Forget those things that aren't worth remembering.

Foley, Tim

31.

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

Johnson, Samuel

32.

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

Proverb

33.

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

Hazlitt, William

34.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

35.

Memory is the thing you forget with.

Chase, Alexander

36.

Memory is the treasury and guardian of all things.

Cicero, Marcus T.

37.

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

Wilde, Oscar

38.

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

Trachman, Jay

39.

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

Proverb, Persian

40.

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

William Shakespeare

41.

If you are speaking the truth you don't have to remember anything.

Twain, Mark

42.

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

43.

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

Dante Alighieri

44.

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

45.

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

Smith, Alexander

46.

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

47.

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

48.

Take only memories, leave nothing but footprints.

Seattle, Chief

49.

Unless we remember we cannot understand.

Forster, Edward M.

50.

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

Bunuel, Luis