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.
I loved the man and do honor his memory, on this side idolatry, as much as any.
Memory is a complicated thing, a relative to truth but not its twin.
How cruelly sweet are the echoes that start
When Memory plays an old tune on the heart.
Often does the memory of former times come, like the evening sun, on my soul.
The music was like the memory of joys that are past, pleasant and mournful to the soul.
Their memory was something tangible and heavy, and I would carry it with me.
Prices have no memory, and yesterday has nothing to do with tomorrow.
Flocks of the memories of the day draw near
The dovecote doors of sleep.
Remember: In the end, the business of life is the acquisition of memories.
“We all know that scent, for instance, is linked to memory and brings us back to a different time."