Memory Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

Oft it may chance that old wives keep in memory word of things that once were needful for the wise to know.

J. R. R. Tolkien

When the loud day for men who sow and reap
Grows still, and on the silence of the town
The insubstantial veils of night and sleep,
The meed of the day's labour, settle down,
Then for me in the stillness of the night
The wasting, watchful hours drag on their course,
And in the idle darkness comes the bite
Of all the burning serpents of remorse;
Dreams seethe; and fretful infelicities
Are swarming in my over-burdened soul,
And Memory before my wakeful eyes
With noiseless hand unwinds her lengthy scroll.
Then, as with loathing I peruse the years,
I tremble, and I curse my natal day,
Wail bitterly, and bitterly shed tears,
But cannot wash the woeful script away.

Alexander Pushkin

Our memory is like one of those shops 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.

We owe to memory not only the increase of our knowledge, and our progress in rational inquiries, but many other intellectual pleasures

I am an omnivorous reader with a strangely retentive memory for trifles.

Arthur Conan Doyle

Alas! how little does the memory of these human inhabitants enhance the beauty of the landscape!

Henry David Thoreau

The memory of Tom Paine will outlive all this. No man who helped to lay the foundations of our liberty — who stepped forth as the champion of so difficult a cause — can be permanently obscured by such attacks. Tom Paine should be read by his countrymen. I commend his fame to their hands.

Advancing bourgeois society liquidates memory, time, recollection as irrational leftovers of the past.

Theodor W. Adorno

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

Michel de Montaigne

I will keep no further journal … to prevent me returning, like a dog, to the vomit of memory.

Each man's memory is his private literature, and every recollection affects us with something of the penetrative force that belongs to the work of art.

Macbeth: Canst thou not minister to a mind diseas'd, Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow, Raze out the written troubles of the brain, And with some sweet oblivious antidote Cleanse the stuff'd bosom of that perilous stuff Which weighs upon the heart? Doctor: Therein the patient Must minister to himself. Macbeth: Throw physic to the dogs; I'll none of it.

William Shakespeare

Memory is an illusion, nothing more. It is a fire that needs constant tending.

For in the end, it is all about memory, its sources and its magnitude, and, of course, its consequences.

The places we have known do not belong solely to the world of space in which we situate them for our greater convenience. They were only a thin slice among contiguous impressions which formed our life at that time; the memory of a certain image is but regret for a certain moment; and houses, roads, avenues are as fleeting, alas, as the years.

He who is not sure of his memory, should not undertake the trade of lying.

Michel de Montaigne

Remember thee!
Ay, thou poor ghost, while memory holds a seat
In this distracted globe.

William Shakespeare

We also honour the great Che Guevara, whose revolutionary exploits, including on our own continent, were too powerful for any prison censors to hide from us. The life of Che is an inspiration to all human beings who cherish freedom. We will always honour his memory.

Believe me, there is no such thing as great suffering, great regret, great memory... Everything is forgotten, even great love.

Near this spot
Are deposited the Remains of one
Who possessed Beauty without Vanity,
Strength without Insolence,
Courage without Ferocity,
And all the virtues of Man, without his Vices.
This Praise, which would be unmeaning Flattery
If inscribed over human ashes,
Is but a just tribute to the Memory of
BOATSWAIN, a DOG

There is never any ending to Paris and the memory of each person who has lived in it differs from that of any other. We always returned to it no matter who we were or how it was changed or with what difficulties, or ease, it could be reached. Paris was always worth it and you received return for whatever you brought to it. But this is how Paris was in the early days when we were very poor and very happy.

Ernest Hemingway

Just as food eaten without appetite is a tedious nourishment, so does study without zeal damage the memory by not assimilating what it absorbs.

Leonardo da Vinci

In that book which is
My memory...
On the first page
That is the chapter when
I first met you
Appear the words...
Here begins a new life.

Dante Alighieri

My dear Theo, Sincere wishes for your good health and serenity on your birthday.1 I would like to have sent you the painting of the potato eaters for this day, but although it's coming along well, it's not quite finished yet. Although I'll have painted the actual painting in a relatively short time, and largely from memory, it's taken a whole winter of painting studies of heads and hands. And as for the few days in which I've painted it now — it's consequently been a formidable fight, but one for which I have great enthusiasm. Although at times I feared that it wouldn't come off. But painting is also 'act and create'.

Vincent van Gogh

Conservatism makes no poetry, breathes no prayer, has no invention; it is all memory. Reform has no gratitude, no prudence, no husbandry.

Ralph Waldo Emerson