But each day brings its petty dust
our soon-choked souls to fill,
and we forget because we must,
and not because we will.
?Matthew Arnold
Memory is the greatest of artists,
and effaces from your
mind what is unnecessary.
?Maurice Baring
Why is it that our memory is good enough
to retain the least triviality that happens to us,
and yet not good enough to recollect how
often we have told it to the same person?
?La Rochefoucauld
Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in
the memory as the wish to forget it.
?Montaigne
A lot of people mistake a short
memory for a clear conscience.
?Doug Larson
Memory is the cabinet of the imagination,
the treasury of reason, the registry of conscience,
and, the council chamber of thought.
?Basile
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
The secret of a good memory is attention,
and attention to a subject depends upon our
interest in it. We rarely forget that which
has made a deep impression on our minds.
?Tryon Edwards
The palest ink is better than the best memory.
?Chinese Proverb
He who is not very strong in memory
should not meddle with lying.
?Michael de Montaigne
There is not any memory with less satisfaction
than the memory of some temptation we resisted.
?James Branch Cabell
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
The more connections that can be made in the brain,
the more integrated the experience is within memory.
?Don Campbell
The difference between false memories
and true ones is the same as for jewels:
it is always the false ones that look the
most real, the most brilliant.
?Salvador Dali
If I could remember the names of all
these particles, I'd be a botanist.
?Enrico Fermi
Memory moderates prosperity, decreases
adversity, controls youth and delights old age.
?Lactantius Firmianus
God gave us memory so that we might
have roses in December.
?J M Barrie
A memory is what is left when something
happens and does not completely unhappen.
?Edward de Bono
Forget those things that aren't worth remembering.
?Tim Foley
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
To be remembered after we are dead,
is but poor recompense for being treated
with contempt while we are living.
?William Hazlitt
A retentive memory may be a good thing,
but the ability to forget is the true token of greatness.
?Elbert Hubbard
Every man's memory is his private literature.
?Aldous Huxley
The true art of memory is the art of attention.
?Samuel Johnson
I have short-term memory loss,
though I like to think of it as Presidential eligibility.
?Paula Poundstone
Memories are all we really own.
?Elias Lieberman
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.
?Lyster
What we learn with pleasure we never forget.
?Alfred Mercier
The memory represents to us not what
we choose but what it pleases.
?Michel Eyquem De Montaigne
The selective memory isn't selective enough.
?Blake Morrison
The advantage of a bad memory is that one enjoys
several times the same good things for the first time.
?Friedrich Nietzsche
Lulled in the countless chambers of the brain,
our thoughts are linked by many a hidden chain;
awake but one, and in, what myriads rise!
?Alexander Pope
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 best memory is that which forgets nothing, but injuries.
Write kindness in marble and write injuries in the dust.
?Persian Proverb
Take only memories, leave nothing but footprints.
?Chief Seattle
Memory is like an orgasm.
It's a lot better if you don't have to fake it.
?Cray Seymore
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
Don't remember what you can infer.
?Harry Tennant
Our moments of inspiration are not lost though
we have no particular poem to show for them;
for those experiences have left an indelible impression,
and we are ever and anon reminded of them.
Henry David Thoreau
