It would add much to human happiness, if an art could be taught of forgetting all of which the remembrance is at once useless and afflictive, that the mind might perform its functions without encumbrance, and the past might no longer encroach upon the present.
—Samuel Johnson (1709–84) British Essayist
Sweet is the memory of past troubles.
—Cicero (106BCE–43BCE) Roman Philosopher, Orator, Politician, Lawyer
To want to forget something is to remember it.
—French Proverb
I cannot walk through the suburbs in the solitude of the night without thinking that the night pleases us because it suppresses idle details, just as our memory does.
—Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine Writer, Essayist, Poet
I am a miser of my memories of you
And will not spend them.
—Witter Bynner (1881–1968) American Poet, Writer, Scholar
Reminiscences make one feel so deliciously aged and sad.
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish Playwright
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.
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922) French Novelist
Memory seldom fails when its office is to show us the tombs of our buried hopes.
—Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington (1789–1849) Irish Novelist, Literary Hostess
Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it.
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–92) French Essayist
Gratitude is the heart’s memory.
—French Proverb
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.
—Martha Gellhorn (1908–98) American Novelist, Travel Writer, Journalist
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.
—George Santayana (1863–1952) Spanish-American Poet, Philosopher
It is memory that provides the heart with impetus, fuels the brain, and propels the corn plant from seed to fruit.
—Joy Harjo (b.1951) American Poet, Musician, Artist
Loaning money causes loss of memory.
—French Proverb
Even if we are occupied with important things and even if we attain honor or fall into misfortune, still let us remember how good it once was here, when we were all together, united by a good and a kind feeling which made us perhaps better than we are.
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–81) Russian Novelist, Essayist, Writer
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.
—Marguerite Yourcenar (1903–87) French Writer
Pleasure is the flower that fades; remembrance is the lasting perfume.
—Stanislas de Boufflers (1738–1815) French Political Leader, Writer
Many a man fails to become a thinker for the sole reason that his memory is too good.
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German Philosopher, Scholar, Writer
The palest ink is better than the best memory.
—Chinese Proverb
It’s surprising how much memory is built around things unnoticed at the time.
—Barbara Kingsolver (b.1955) American Novelist, Essayist, Poet
Memory itself is an internal rumour.
—George Santayana (1863–1952) Spanish-American Poet, Philosopher
And even if you were in some prison, the walls of which let none of the sounds of the world come to your senses – would you not then still have your childhood, that precious, kingly possession, that treasure-house of memories?
—Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian Poet
We consider ourselves as defective in memory, either because we remember less than we desire, or less than we suppose others to remember.
—Samuel Johnson (1709–84) British Essayist
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.
—Primo Levi (1919–87) Italian Novelist, Poet, Chemist
Our memories are card indexes consulted and then returned in disorder by authorities whom we do not control.
—Cyril Connolly (1903–74) British Literary Critic, Writer
Memory is everyone’s friend—it leaves you when you need it most.
—Spanish Proverb
If, after I depart this vale, you ever remember me and have thought to please my ghost, forgive some sinner and wink your eye at some homely girl.
—H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) American Journalist, Literary Critic
When eating bamboo sprouts, remember the man who planted them.
—Chinese Proverb
Like ultraviolet rays memory shows to each man in the book of life a script that invisibly and prophetically glosses the text.
—Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) German Literary and Marxist Critic
The past is never dead, it is not even past.
—William Faulkner (1897–1962) American Novelist
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