Skip to content

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.

Random quote on Memory

Most quoted on memory:

I’m telling it now. And I’m trying to remember how it actually was. Not just how I remember remembering it. But memory is a hard disk that overwrites itself constantly.

Adrian Tchaikovsky Saturation Point (2024)

I count myself in nothing else so happy
As in a soul rememb'ring my good friends;
And, as my fortune ripens with thy love,
It shall be still thy true love's recompense.

William Shakespeare

There comes to me out of the Past
A voice, whose tones are sweet and wild,
Singing a song almost divine,
And with a tear in every line.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

A land of promise, a land of memory,
A land of promise flowing with the milk
And honey of delicious memories!

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Things are revealed through the memories we have of them. Remembering a thing means seeing it—only then—for the first time.

Cesare Pavese This Business of Living (1935)

Nostalgia is a seductive liar.

George Ball

A baby is expected. A trip is expected. News is expected. Forgetfulness is expected. An invitation is expected. Hope is expected. But memories are not expected. They just come.

Giannina Braschi

Memory itself is an internal rumour.

George Santayana

Tho' lost to sight to mem'ry dear
Thou ever wilt remain.

George Linley

Though varying wishes, hopes, and fears,
Fever'd the progress of these years,
Yet now, days, weeks, and months but seem
The recollection of a dream.

Walter Scott

Sweet Memory! wafted by thy gentle gale,
Oft up the stream of Time I turn my sail.

Samuel Rogers The Pleasures of Memory (1792)

When comparing human memory and computer memory it is clear that the human version has two distinct disadvantages. Firstly, as indeed I have experienced myself, due to aging, human memory can exhibit very poor short term recall.

Kevin Warwick

Remember thee!
Yea, from the table of my memory
I'll wipe away all trivial fond records.

William Shakespeare

Far from our eyes th' Enchanting Objects set,
Advantage by the friendly Distance get.

Alexis

What peaceful hours I once enjoy'd!
How sweet their memory still!
But they have left an aching void
The world can never fill.

William Cowper

Oft in the stilly night
E'er slumber's chain has bound me,
Fond memory brings the light
Of other days around me.

Thomas Moore

Ah! memories of sweet summer eves,
Of moonlit wave and willowy way,
Of stars and flowers, and dewy leaves,
And smiles and tones more dear than they!

John Greenleaf Whittier

When Time who steals our years away
Shall steal our pleasures too,
The mem'ry of the past will stay,
And half our joys renew.

Thomas Moore Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed (1919)

It is therefore necessary that memorable things should be committed to writing, (the witness of times, the light and the life of truth,) and not wholly betaken [i.e., committed] to slippery memory which seldom yields a certain reckoning.

Edward Coke Les Reports de Edward Coke (1660)

Ah, tell me not that memory
Sheds gladness o'er the past ;
What is recalled by faded flowers,
Save that they did not last?
Were it not better to forget,
Than but remember and regret?

Letitia Elizabeth Landon Ethel Churchill (1837)

Related topics