Sayings about Memory
Gratitude is the heart’s memory. ~ French Proverb
A good memory is not so good as a little ink. ~ Chinese Proverb
Memory is life’s clock. ~ Spanish Proverbs
Everyone blames his memory, but never his judgement. ~ French Proverb
Loaning money causes loss of memory. ~ French Proverb
Acts of kindness may soon be forgotten, but the memory of an offense remains. ~ Traditional Proverb
When glory comes, memory departs. ~ French Proverb
Memory is everyone’s friend — it leaves you when you need it most. ~ Spanish Proverb
A beautiful maxim in the memory is like a piece of gold in the purse. ~ French Proverb
Sweet is the memory of past labor. ~ Greek Proverb
The palest ink is better than the best memory. ~ Chinese Proverb
For yesterday is but a memory and tomorrow is only a vision; but today well lived makes every yesterday a memory of happiness and every tomorrow a vision of hope. ~ Sanskrit Proverb
I hate a jovial table companion with a good memory. ~ Greek Proverb
One lives in the world’s memory only by what they have done in the world’s behalf. ~ Traditional Proverb
Quotations about Memory
Memory is the faculty of the mind by which information is encoded, stored, and retrieved. Memory is vital to experiences and related to limbic systems, it is the retention of information over time for the purpose of influencing future action. ~ An excerpt from Wikipedia page on Memory
Nothing improves the memory more than trying to forget. ~ Author Unknown
The man with a clear conscience probably has a poor memory. ~ Author Unknown
We are linked by blood, and blood is memory without language. ~ Joyce Carol Oates
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
Memory is the diary that we all carry about with us. ~ Oscar Wilde
It is surprising how much of memory is built around things unnoticed at the time. ~ Barbara Kingsolver
I’m always fascinated by the way memory diffuses fact. ~ Diane Sawyer
Memory always obeys the commands of the heart. ~ Antoine Rivarol
The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting. ~ Milan Kundera
For the memory of love is sweet, though the love itself were in vain. And what I have lost of pleasure, assuage what I find of pain. ~ Author Unknown
The best way to keep good acts in memory is to refresh them with new. ~ Cato The Elder
In memory’s telephoto lens, far objects are magnified. ~ John Updike
A man’s real possession is his memory. In nothing else is he rich, in nothing else is he poor. ~ Alexander Smith
One must always maintain one’s connection to the past and yet ceaselessly pull away from it. To remain in touch with the past requires a love of memory. To remain in touch with the past requires a constant imaginative effort. ~ Gaston Bachelard
Memory is a child walking along a seashore. You never can tell what small pebble it will pick up and store away among its treasured things. ~ Pierce Harris
Memory is what tells a man that his wife’s birthday was yesterday. ~ Mario Rocco
In memory everything seems to happen to music. ~ Tennessee Williams
A man of great memory without learning hath a rock and a spindle and no staff to spin. ~ George Herbert
Observation is an old man’s memory. ~ Jonathan Swift
Memory only slumbers—never dies. ~ Thomas Paine
She glances at the photo, and the pilot light of memory flickers in her eyes. ~ Frank Deford
Memory itself is an internal rumour. ~ George Santayana
A memory is what is left when something happens and does not completely unhappen. ~ Edward de Bono
The advantage of a bad memory is that one enjoys several times the same good things for the first time. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche
Memory is the thing you forget with. ~ Alexander Chase
Every man’s memory is his private literature. ~ Aldous Huxley
With most men, scarce a link of memory holds yesterday and to-day together. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
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
The memory represents to us not what we choose but what it pleases. ~ Michel Eyquem De Montaigne
Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it. ~ Michel de Montaigne
I have a memory like an elephant. In fact, elephants often consult me. ~ Noel Coward
The biggest thing in today’s sorrow is the memory of yesterday’s joy. ~ Kahlil Gibran
Everyone complains of the badness of his memory, but nobody of his judgment. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld
Oh, how cruelly sweet are the echoes that start when memory plays an old tune on the heart! ~ Eliza Cook
Memory is a complicated thing, a relative to truth, but not its twin. ~ Barbara Kingsolver
The moments of the past do not remain still; they retain in our memory the motion which drew them towards the future, towards a future which has itself become the past, and draw us on in their train. ~ Marcel Proust
It was one of those perfect English autumnal days which occur more frequently in memory than in life. ~ P.D. James
The life of the dead is placed in the memory of the living. ~ Marcus T. Cicero
A good memory is one trained to forget the trivial. ~ Cliff Fadiman
We are able to find everything in our memory, which is like a dispensary or chemical laboratory in which chance steers our hand sometimes to a soothing drug and sometimes to a dangerous poison. ~ Marcel Proust
Vanity plays lurid tricks with our memory. ~ Joseph Conrad
Sweet is the memory of past troubles. ~ Marcus T. Cicero
The two offices of memory are collection and distribution. ~ Samuel Johnson
Be careful about lending a friend money. It may damage her memory. ~ Author Unknown
Memory moderates prosperity, decreases adversity, controls youth and delights old age. ~ Lactantius Firmianus
Memory is the mother of all wisdom. ~ Aeschylus
Memory is the scribe of the soul. ~ Aristotle
Memory is not wisdom; idiots can by rote repeat volumes. Yet what is wisdom without memory? ~ Martin Tupper
Memory is the greatest of artists, and effaces from your mind what is unnecessary. ~ Maurice Baring
One lives in the hope of becoming a memory. ~ Antonio Porchia
It’s surprising how much memory is built around things unnoticed at the time. ~ Barbara Kingsolver
He who has not a good memory should never take upon himself the trade of lying. ~ Michel Eyquem De Montaigne
Memory depends very much on the perspicuity, regularity, and order of our thoughts. Many complain of the want of memory, when the defect is in the judgment; and others, by grasping at all, retain nothing. ~ Thomas Fuller
A man’s real possession is his memory. In nothing else is he rich, in nothing else is he poor. ~ Alexander Smith
The world shrieks and sinks talons into our hearts. This we call memory. ~ Tim O’Brien
The heart’s memory eliminates the bad and magnifies the good. ~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Lord, keep my memory green. ~ Charles Dickens
No man has a good enough memory to make a successful liar. ~ Abraham Lincoln
Memory is more than a dustbin of time, stuffed with yesterday’s trash. Rather, memory is a glorious grab bag of the past from which one can at leisure pluck bittersweet experiences of times gone by and relive them. ~ Hal Boyle
The best memory is that which forgets nothing, but injuries. Write kindness in marble and write injuries in the dust. ~ Iranian Proverb
The memory is perpetually looking back when we have nothing present to entertain us. It is like those repositories in animals that are filled with food, on which they may ruminate when their present pastures fail. ~ Joseph Addison
Nothing is so admirable in politics as a short memory. ~ John Kenneth Galbraith
A very great memory often forgetteth how much time is lost by repeating things of no use. ~ George Savile
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. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld
It was as if some silver chime had waked a chord in his memory. ~ Florence Bone
Each day of our lives we make deposits in the memory banks of our children. ~ Charles Swindoll
Your memory is a monster; you forget—it doesn’t. It simply files things away. It keeps things for you, or hides things from you—and summons them to your recall with a will of its own. You think you have a memory; but it has you! ~ John Irving
Memory is the only paradise from which we cannot be driven. ~ Jean Paul Richter
We can invent only with memory. ~ Alphonse Karr
The selective memory isn’t selective enough. ~ Blake Morrison
If we carry any possession from this world, it is the memory of a great love. ~ Author Unknown
The more connections that can be made in the brain, the more integrated the experience is within memory. ~ Don Campbell
Memory is like an orgasm. It’s a lot better if you don’t have to fake it. ~ Cray Seymore
There are lots of people who mistake their imagination for their memory. ~ Josh Billings
God gave us memory that we might have roses in December. ~ James M. Barrie
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. ~ Jon Wynne-Tyson
There is not any memory with less satisfaction than the memory of some temptation we resisted. ~ James Branch Cabell
Live out of your imagination instead of out of your memory. ~ Les Brown
Life is all memory, except for the one present moment that goes by you so quickly you hardly catch it going. ~ Tennessee Williams
Memory is the cabinet of the imagination, the treasury of reason, the registry of conscience, and, the council chamber of thought. ~ St. Basil
A bad conscience has a very good memory. ~ Author Unknown
The true art of memory is the art of attention. ~ Samuel Johnson
A retentive memory may be a good thing, but the ability to forget is the true token of greatness. ~ Elbert Hubbard
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
Don’t waste today regretting yesterday instead of making a memory for tomorrow. ~ Laura Palmer
Memory is the treasury and guardian of all things. ~ Marcus T. Cicero
The only permanent thing that money can buy is a happy memory. ~ Sydney J. Harris
Memory is a crazy woman that hoards colored rags and throws away food. ~ Austin O’Malley
Sooner or later we all discover that the important moments in life are not the advertised ones, not the birthdays, the graduations, the weddings, not the great goals achieved. The real milestones are less prepossessing. They come to the door of memory. ~ Susan B. Anthony
Memory… is the diary that we all carry about with us. ~ Oscar Wilde