Memory Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

But Memory blushes at the sneer,
And Honor turns with frown defiant,
And Freedom, leaning on her spear,
Laughs louder than the laughing giant.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

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

I myself have proved it to be of no small use, when in bed in the dark, to recall in fancy the external details of forms previously studied, or other noteworthy things conceived by subtle speculation; and this is certainly an admirable exercise, and useful for impressing things on the memory.

Leonardo da Vinci

No memory of having starred
Atones for later disregard,
Or keeps the end from being hard. Better to go down dignified
With boughten friendship at your side
Than none at all. Provide, provide!

Every day your memory grows dimmer - it doesn't haunt me like it did before.

We find a little of everything in our memory; it is a sort of pharmacy, a sort of chemical laboratory, in which our groping hand may come to rest, now on a sedative drug, now on a dangerous poison.

Blest pair! if aught my verse avail,
No day shall make your memory fail
From off the heart of time.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Like tired dogs they stand there, because they use up all their strength in remaining upright in one's memory.

… when she became not then half of memory became not and if I become not then all of remembering will cease to be.—Yes, he thought, between grief and nothing I will take grief.

William Faulkner

So long as the memory of certain beloved friends lives in my heart, I shall say that life is good.

He that hath a satirical vein, as he maketh others afraid of his wit, so he had need be afraid of others' memory.

And how could we endure to live and let time pass if we were always crying for one day or one year to come back—if we did not know that every day in a life fills the whole life with expectation and memory and that these are that day?

So do we pass the ghosts that haunt us later in our lives; they sit undramatically by the roadside like poor beggars, and we see them only from the corners of our eyes, if we see them at all. The idea that they have been waiting there for us rarely crosses our minds. Yet they do wait, and when we have passed, they gather up their bundles of memory and fall in behind, treading in our footsteps and catching up, little by little.

I was told that the Chinese said they would bury me by the Western Lake and build a shrine to my memory. I have some slight regret that this did not happen as I might have become a god, which would have been very chic for an atheist.

Bertrand Russell

Just as eating against one's will is injurious to health, so studying without a liking for it spoils the memory, and it retains nothing it takes in.

Leonardo da Vinci

If anything can, it is memory that will save humanity.

'It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards,' the Queen remarked.

Many a man fails to become a thinker only because his memory is too good.

Friedrich Nietzsche