Leftovers in their less visible form are called memories. Stored in the refrigerator of the mind and the cupboard of the heart.
—Thomas Fuller (1608–61) English Cleric, Historian
The camera relieves us of the burden of memory. It surveys us like God, and it surveys for us. Yet no other god has been so cynical, for the camera records in order to forget.
—John Berger (1926–2017) English Art Critic, Novelist
A man of great memory without learning hath a rock and a spindle and no staff to spin.
—George Herbert (1593–1633) Welsh Anglican Poet, Orator, Clergyman
I’m always fascinated by the way memory diffuses fact.
—Diane Sawyer (b.1945) American Journalist, TV Personality
Perhaps one day this too will be pleasant to remember.
—Virgil (70–19 BCE) Roman Poet
A good memory is one trained to forget the trivial.
—Clifton Fadiman (1904–99) American Author, Radio Personality
It is not without good reason said, that he who has not a good memory should never take upon him the trade of lying.
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–92) French Essayist
If you wish to forget something on the spot, make a note that this thing is to be remembered.
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–49) American Poet
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.
—Susan Sontag (1933–2004) American Writer, Philosopher
The Right Honourable Gentleman is indebted to his memory for his jests, and to his imagination for his facts.
—Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751–1816) Irish-born British Playwright, Poet, Elected Rep
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.
—Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973) Irish Novelist, Short-story Writer
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
If you want to win friends, make it a point to remember them. If you remember my name, you pay me a subtle compliment; you indicate that I have made an impression on you. Remember my name and you add to my feeling of importance.
—Dale Carnegie (1888–1955) American Self-Help Author
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
Nothing improves the memory more than trying to forget.
—Indian Proverb
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.
—Eugene Ionesco (1909–94) Romanian-born French Dramatist
Of all the faculties of the mind, memory is the first that flourishes, and the first that dies.
—Charles Caleb Colton (c.1780–1832) English Clergyman, Aphorist
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, Writer
Joy’s recollection is no longer joy, while sorrow’s memory is sorrow still.
—Lord Byron (George Gordon Byron) (1788–1824) English Romantic Poet
Nothing is more memorable than a smell. One scent can be unexpected, momentary and fleeting, yet conjure up a childhood summer beside a lake in the mountains; another, a moonlit beach; a third, a family dinner of pot roast and sweet potatoes during a myrtle-mad August in a Midwestern town. Smells detonate softly in our memory like poignant land mines hidden under the weedy mass of years. Hit a tripwire of smell and memories explode all at once. A complex vision leaps out of the undergrowth.
—Diane Ackerman (b.1948) American Poet, Essayist, Naturalist
Do not forget little kindnesses and do not remember small faults.
—Chinese Proverb
One need not be a chamber to be haunted;
One need not be a house;
The brain has corridors surpassing
Material place.
—Emily Dickinson (1830–86) American Poet
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
Memory is the receptacle and case of science: and therefore mine being so treacherous, if I know little, I cannot much complain. I know, in general, the names of the arts, and of what they treat, but nothing more. I turn over books; I do not study them. What I retain I no longerrecognise as another’s; ’tis only what my judgment has made its advantage of, the discourses and imaginations in which it has been instructed: the author, place, words, and other circumstances, I immediately forget; and I am so excellent at forgetting, that I no less forget my own writingsand compositions than the rest. I am very often quoted to myself, and am not aware of it. Whoever should inquire of me where I had the verses and examples, that I have here huddled together, would puzzle me to tell him, and yet I have not borrowed them but from famous and known authors, not contenting myself that they were rich, if I, moreover, had them not from rich and honourable hands, where there is a concurrence of authority with reason. It is no great wonder if my book run the same fortune that otherbooks do, if my memory lose what I have written as well as what I have read, and what I give, as well as what I receive.
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–92) French Essayist
It’s surprising how much memory is built around things unnoticed at the time.
—Barbara Kingsolver (b.1955) American Novelist, Essayist, Poet
Come to me in the silence of the night,
Come to me in the speaking silence of a dream.
Come with soft rounded cheeks and eyes as bright as sunlight on a stream.
Come back in tears,
O memory, hope, love of finished years.
—Christina Rossetti (1830–94) English Poet, Hymn Writer
Memory is life’s clock.
—Spanish Proverb
The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.
—Milan Kundera (b.1929) Czech Novelist
What beastly incidents our memories insist on cherishing, the ugly, and the disgusting; the beautiful things we have to keep diaries to remember.
—Eugene O’Neill (1888–1953) American Playwright
A man’s memory may almost become the art of continually varying and misrepresenting his past, according to his interest in the present.
—George Santayana (1863–1952) Spanish-American Poet, Philosopher
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?
—Lord Byron (George Gordon Byron) (1788–1824) English Romantic Poet
If you want to keep your memories, you first have to live them.
—Bob Dylan (b.1941) American Singer-songwriter
A shared vision is not an idea. It is not even an important idea such as freedom. It is, rather, a force in people’s hearts, a force of impressive power… Shared vision is vital for the learning organization because it provides the focus and energy for learning.
—Peter Senge (b.1947) American Management Consultant, Author, Scientist
Memory is often the attribute of stupidity; it generally belongs to heavy spirits whom it makes even heavier by the baggage it loads on them.
—Francois-Rene de Chateaubriand (1768–1848) French Writer, Academician, Statesman
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
It was one of those perfect English autumnal days which occur more frequently in memory than in life.
—P. D. James (b.1920) British Novelist
Tell me and I’ll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I’ll understand.
—Chinese Proverb
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.
—Lewis Thomas
I should allow only my heart to have imagination; and for the rest rely on memory, that long drawn sunset of one’s personal truth.
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977) Russian-born American Novelist
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.
—Thomas Fuller (1608–61) English Cleric, Historian
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.
—Unknown
There are many books which we think we have read when we have not. There are, at least, many that we think we remember when we do not. An original picture was, perhaps, imprinted upon the brain, but it has changed with our own changing minds. We only remember our remembrance.
—G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English Journalist, Novelist, Essayist, Poet
The true art of memory is the art of attention.
—Samuel Johnson (1709–84) British Essayist
Pleasure is the flower that fades; remembrance is the lasting perfume.
—Stanislas de Boufflers (1738–1815) French Political leader, Writer
Memory is corrupted and ruined by a crowd of memories. If I am going to have a true memory, there are a thousand things that must first be forgotten. Memory is not fully itself when it reaches only into the past. A memory that is not alive to the present does not remember the here and now, does not remember its true identity, is not memory at all. He who remembers nothing but facts and past events, and is never brought back into the present, is a victim of amnesia.
—Thomas Merton (1915–68) American Trappist Monk
Memory is a complicated thing, a relative to truth, but not its twin.
—Barbara Kingsolver (b.1955) American Novelist, Essayist, Poet
Gratitude is the heart’s memory.
—French Proverb
Nothing is more responsible for the good old days than a bad memory.
—Franklin P. Adams (1881–1960) American Columnist, Radio Personality, Author
The memory is sometimes so retentive, so serviceable, so obedient-at others so bewildered and weak-and at others again, so tyrannic, so beyond control!
—Jane Austen (1775–1817) English Novelist
Memory has the singular characteristic of recalling in a friend absent, as in a journey long past, only that which is agreeable.
—Charles Dudley Warner (1829–1900) American Essayist, Novelist