Motivational Quotes

Memory

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

Best Quotes about Memory

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

Kingsolver, Barbara

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

Proverb

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

Pavese, Cesare

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

Mark Twain

Lord, keep my memory green.

Dickens, Charles

A good memory is one trained to forget the trivial.

Fadiman, Clifton

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

Proverb, Persian

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

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

Alexander Smith

10.

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

11.

Memory always obeys the commands of the heart.

Rivarol, Antoine

12.

In memory everything seems to happen to music.

Williams, Tennessee

13.

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

14.

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

15.

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

16.

The selective memory isn't selective enough.

Morrison, Blake

17.

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

18.

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

19.

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.

20.

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

Smith, Alexander

21.

Take only memories, leave nothing but footprints.

Seattle, Chief

22.

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

Lewis, Joe E.

23.

The palest ink lasts longer than the most retentive memory.

Proverb, Chinese

24.

You can fall ill with just a memory.

Paolo Giordano

25.

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

Coward, Noel

26.

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

27.

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

28.

Creditors have better memories than debtors.

Benjamin Franklin

29.

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

Pope, Alexander

30.

Memories are all we really own.

Lieberman, Elias

31.

We have all forgot more than we remember.

Fuller, Thomas

32.

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

Friedrich Nietzsche

33.

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

Michel de Montaigne

34.

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

William Shakespeare

35.

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

Twain, Mark

36.

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

37.

The more a man can forget, the greater the number of metamorphoses which his life can undergo, the more he can remember the more divine his life becomes.

Kierkegaard, S°ren

38.

Memory is the mother of all wisdom.

Aeschylus

39.

Forget those things that aren't worth remembering.

Foley, Tim

40.

Memories can be sad, but sometimes they can also save you.

Takayuki Ikkaku, Arisa Hosaka and Toshihiro Kawabata

41.

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

42.

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

Alexander Solzhenitsyn

43.

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

44.

Of what significance are the things you can forget.

Thoreau, Henry David

45.

Don't remember what you can infer.

Tennant, Harry

46.

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

Williams, Tennessee

47.

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

48.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

49.

People tend to remember my performances, not me.

Barkin, Ellen

50.

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

Dante Alighieri