Memory Quotes
Memory has a small number of very good, well-sourced lines. Oscar Wilde, in The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), calls it the diary we all carry about with us. William James, in The Principles of Psychology (1890), says that forgetting is as important a function of the intellect as recollecting. Ray Bradbury, in Long After Midnight (1976), says that God gives us dreadful gifts and the most dreadful is memory.
The flagged lines are the kind that circulate on social media. “Remember me with smiles and laughter” is credited to Laura Ingalls Wilder, “Sometimes you will never know the value of a moment until it becomes a memory” to Dr. Seuss, and a line about the sap in the trees carrying the memory of the red man to Chief Seattle. All three are marked misattributed.
To the memory of the Man, first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen.
Memory marks the horizon of our consciousness, imagination its zenith.
The fires of history burn hot and long, but memories of fires do not burn long enough.
“Each role I did had its good and bad memories.” But she does not elucidate.
The memory of one who is taken into the heart of a little child is kept forever green.
A people without historical memory is a people without dignity.
It remains one human episode amid all the atrocities which have stained the memory of the war.
By mind I mean the totality of perceptions, memories and ideas in an organism.
The expense of a monument is superfluous; my memory will endure if my actions deserve it.
God gave His children memory
That in life's garden there might be
June roses in December.