The Best Quotes About Memory

Updated June 14, 2019 1.3k votes 340 voters 32.5k views

List RulesMust be a famous or well-known quote. Vote for the Memory sayings that strongly resonate with you, and downvote any you didn't like.

A list of the best memory quotes and sayings, including the names of each speaker or author when available. This list is sorted by popularity, so only the most famous memory quotes are at the top. The authors of these historic memory quotes are displayed next to each quote, so if you see one you like be sure to check out other inspirational memory quotes from that same writer.

This list answers the questions, "What are the best quotes about memory?" and "What are inspirational memory quotes?"

This list includes notable memory quotes by various authors, writers, playwrights, speakers, politicians, athletes, poets, and more. Vote on your favorites so that the greatest memory quotes rise to the top, as the order of the list changes dynamically based on votes. Don't let your favorite memory sayings get to the bottom of the list.

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1
48
19
Unless we remember we cannot understand.
E. M. Forster
2
39
12
Sometimes you will never know the value of a moment until it becomes a memory.
Dr. Suess
3
20
2
When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not.
Mark Twain
4
32
16
To observe attentively is to remember distinctly.
Edgar Allan Poe
5
27
13
You have to begin to lose your memory, if only in bits and pieces, to realize that memory is what makes our lives. Life without memory is no life at all, just as an intelligence without the possibility of expression is not really an intelligence. Our memory is our coherence, our reason, our feeling, even our action. Without it, we are nothing.
Luis Buñuel
6
26
16
Memory is the scribe of the soul.
Aristotle
7
10
4
Human memory is a marvelous but fallacious instrument. The memories which lie within us are not carved in stone; not only do they tend to become erased as the years go by, but often they change, or even increase by incorporating extraneous features.
Primo Levi
8
12
6
A good memory is one trained to forget the trivial.
Clifton Fadiman
9
8
2
Our memories are card indexes consulted and then returned in disorder by authorities whom we do not control.
Cyril Connolly
10
6
0
Of what significance are the things you can forget.
Henry David Thoreau
11
6
0
When to the sessions of sweet silent thought I summon up remembrance of things past, I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste. Then can I drown an eye (unused to flow) For precious friends hid in death's dateless night, and weep afresh love's long since cancelled woe, and moan the expense of many a vanished sight. Then can I grieve at grievances foregone, and heavily from woe to woe tell over the sad account of fore-bemoaned moan, Which I new pay as if not paid before. But if the while I think on thee, dear friend, all losses are restored and sorrows end.
William Shakespeare
12
11
7
I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.
13
6
2
The more a man can forget, the greater the number of metamorphoses which his life can undergo, the more he can remember the more divine his life becomes.
Søren Kierkegaard

14
6
2
The best memory is that which forgets nothing, but injuries. Write kindness in marble and write injuries in the dust.
15
6
2
The short memories of American voters is what keeps our politicians in office.
Will Rogers
16
8
6
The true art of memory is the art of attention.
Samuel Johnson
17
5
4
A man of great memory without learning hath a rock and a spindle and no staff to spin.
George Herbert
18
5
4
Like ultraviolet rays memory shows to each man in the book of life a script that invisibly and prophetically glosses the text.
Walter Benjamin
19
8
8
Vanity plays lurid tricks with our memory.
Joseph Conrad
20
3
2
Lulled in the countless chambers of the brain, our thoughts are linked by many a hidden chain; awake but one, and in, what myriads rise!
Alexander Pope
21
6
6
Every man's memory is his private literature.
Aldous Huxley
22
4
2
Memory depends very much on the perspicuity, regularity, and order of our thoughts. Many complain of the want of memory, when the defect is in the judgment; and others, by grasping at all, retain nothing.
Thomas Fuller
23
3
2
In memory everything seems to happen to music.
Tennessee Williams

24
5
4
Sweet is the memory of past troubles.
Cicero
25
6
6
To be remembered after we are dead, is but poor recompense for being treated with contempt while we are living.
William Hazlitt

Unless we remember we cannot understand.

Sometimes you will never know the value of a moment until it becomes a memory.

When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not.

To observe attentively is to remember distinctly.

Memory is the scribe of the soul.

Human memory is a marvelous but fallacious instrument. The memories which lie within us are not carved in stone; not only do they tend to become erased as the years go by, but often they change, or even increase by incorporating extraneous features.

A good memory is one trained to forget the trivial.

Our memories are card indexes consulted and then returned in disorder by authorities whom we do not control.

Of what significance are the things you can forget.

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.

The more a man can forget, the greater the number of metamorphoses which his life can undergo, the more he can remember the more divine his life becomes.

The best memory is that which forgets nothing, but injuries. Write kindness in marble and write injuries in the dust.

The short memories of American voters is what keeps our politicians in office.

The true art of memory is the art of attention.

A man of great memory without learning hath a rock and a spindle and no staff to spin.

Like ultraviolet rays memory shows to each man in the book of life a script that invisibly and prophetically glosses the text.

Vanity plays lurid tricks with our memory.

Lulled in the countless chambers of the brain, our thoughts are linked by many a hidden chain; awake but one, and in, what myriads rise!

Every man's memory is his private literature.

Memory depends very much on the perspicuity, regularity, and order of our thoughts. Many complain of the want of memory, when the defect is in the judgment; and others, by grasping at all, retain nothing.

In memory everything seems to happen to music.

Sweet is the memory of past troubles.

To be remembered after we are dead, is but poor recompense for being treated with contempt while we are living.