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.
The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.
Memory, for me, is often a home where the furniture has been rearranged one too many times.
Eternal Memory of the dead lasts as long as they are paid with memory.
Experience teaches that a good memory is generally joined to a weak judgment.
Thou first, best friend that Heav'n assigns below
To sooth and sweeten all the cares we know.
It's good to have a short memory because it keeps life fresh.
We can remember minutely and precisely only the things which never really happened to us.