quotations about memory
What thousands and millions of recollections there must be in us! And every now and then one of them becomes known to us; and it shows us what spiritual depths are growing in us, what mines of memory.
WILLIAM MOUNTFORD
attributed, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers
Blessed are the forgetful, for they get the better even of their blunders.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
Beyond Good and Evil
The memory has as many moods as the temper, and shifts its scenery like a diorama.
GEORGE ELIOT
Middlemarch
Human beings have only that confusing mass of chemically driven neurological storage to rely on. They're all subjective and emotion-tinged. How can they trust any of their memories?
DAN SIMMONS
Olympos
Memory is a great deceiver: it embroiders until naught is left but the glory and the pleasure.
TOBSHA LEARNER
The Witch of Cologne
It was not that he didn't remember he once had another sort of life. But, like the old yellowing photograph at home, which he did not burn, it was sad to think about, and far away, like another world that had disappeared forever.
GAO XINGJIAN
One Man's Bible
Vague memories hang about the mind like cobwebs.
GEORGE ELIOT
Romola
Memory, when duly impregnated with ascertained facts, is sometimes surprisingly fertile.
GEORGE ELIOT
Silas Marner
Has it ever happened to you...? The color of the day suddenly changes to shadow. And you know you're going to remember that moment for the rest of your life.
MARTIN AMIS
House of Meetings
Because computers have memories, we imagine that they must be something like our human memories, but that is simply not true. Computer memories work in a manner alien to human memories. My memory lets me recognize the faces of my friends, whereas my own computer never even recognizes me. My computer's memory stores a million phone numbers with perfect accuracy, but I have to stop and think to recall my own.
ALAN COOPER
The Inmates Are Running the Asylum
Memories are like flagstones, time and distance work upon them like drops of acid.
UGO BETTI
Crime on Goat Island
Memory is a bad book-keeper.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
To an old memory like mine the present days are but as a little water poured on the deep.
GEORGE ELIOT
Felix Holt
Great is the power of memory, a fearful thing, O my God, a deep and boundless manifoldness; and this thing is the mind, and this am I myself. What am I then, O my God? What nature am I? A life various and manifold, and exceeding immense.
ST. AUGUSTINE
Confessions
Memory, with its fugitive adjustments, is the merciful veil to the grim enactments of the first law. It hides the anguish in the human heart which is always craving for perpetuity.
STACY AUMONIER
"That Which Is Always Changing", One After Another
Memory demands (a) an image, (b) a belief in past existence. The belief may be expressed in the words "this existed."
BERTRAND RUSSELL
"Memory", The Analysis of Mind
Memory fades, memory adjusts, memory conforms to what we think we remember.
JOAN DIDION
Blue Nights
Remembering. I am half-smiling at ridiculous situations, crazy people and strange places, all with the benefit of hindsight. I admit I am choosing my memories selectively. I am quickening time, losing years and even improving my looks. I have never included the bad side which, I know, is an integral part of one's memories. That was not for me.
JOHN KEMP
Sticky Wicket
So in the heart,
When, fading slowly down the past,
Fond memories depart,
And each that leaves it seems the last;
Long after all the rest are flown,
Returns a solitary tone,
The after-echo of departed years,
And touches all the soul to tears.
HENRY VAN DYKE
"The After-Echo"
Memory is not wisdom; idiots can rote volumes.
MARTIN FARQUHAR TUPPER
Proverbial Philosophy