1,222 Memory Quotes

Who ran to help me when I fell, And would some pretty story tell, Or kiss the place to make it well? My mother.

It is also possible within this lifetime to enhance the power of the mind, enabling one to reaccess memories from previous lives. Such recollection tends to be more accessible during meditative experiences in the dream state. Once one has accessed memories of previous lives in the dream state, one gradually recalls them in the waking state.

How rich art is; if one can only remember what one has seen, one is never without food for thought or truly lonely, never alone.

Tell me not here, it needs not saying, What tune the enchantress plays In aftermaths of soft September Or under blanching mays, For she and I were long acquainted And I knew all her ways.

I was assailed by memories of a life that wasn't mine anymore, but one in which I'd found the simplest and most lasting joys.

To be a character who feels a deep emotion, one must go into the memory's vault and mix in a sad memory from one's own life.

I used to suffer particularly because the poor animals must endure so much pain and want. The sight of an old, limping horse being dragged along by one man while another man struck him with a stick he was being driven to the Colmar slaughterhouse - haunted me for weeks.

There cannot be mental atrophy in any person who continues to observe, to remember what he observes, and to seek answers for his unceasing hows and whys about things.

Memory is the way we keep telling ourselves our stories - and telling other people a somewhat different version of our stories.

Sometimes I get the start of a story from a memory, an anecdote, but that gets lost and is usually unrecognizable in the final story.

I turned vegetarian after 9/11. A friend of mine came back from New York and said that he couldn't stand the smell of burnt flesh. It immediately reminded me of a barbecue.

We do not have the right to forget that reactionary imperialism exists and its forces actively operate in the world, that they encourage the arms race and that they try to restore the spirit of the Cold War.

No matter how long we exist, we have our memories. Points in time which time itself cannot erase. Suffering may distort my backward glances, but even to suffering, some memories will yield nothing of their beauty or their splendor. Rather they remain as hard as gems.

I watched them from the window, thy children at their play, And I thought of all my own dear friends, who were far, oh, far away, And childish loves, and childish cares, and a child's own buoyant gladness Came gushing back again to me with a soft and solemn sadness; And feelings frozen up full long, and thoughts of long ago, Seemed to be thawing at my heart with a warm and sudden flow.

Nobody would say the cowshed was heaven and nobody would say the inhuman torture of so many victims be called a revolution of the proletariat. ... A museum should be established to remind China of the follies and disasters that had fallen from 1966 to 1976. We cannot forget what had happened and history should not repeat itself.

It's surprising how much memory is built around things unnoticed at the time.

Memory is a complicated thing, a relative to truth, but not its twin.

There's a graveyard in northern France where all the dead boys from D-Day are buried. The white crosses reach from one horizon to the other. I remember looking it over and thinking it was a forest of graves. But the rows were like this, dizzying, diagonal, perfectly straight, so after all it wasn't a forest but an orchard of graves. Nothing to do with nature, unless you count human nature.

All the time a person is a child he is both a child and learning to be a parent. After he becomes a parent he becomes predominantly a parent reliving childhood.

My earliest memory is of feeling different. My parents told me that I wasn't like other children.

You know I'm finished with the old chess because it's all just a lot of book and memorization you know.

The key to immortality is first living a life worth remembering.

The highway is alive tonight But nobody's kiddin' nobody about where it goes I'm sittin' down here in the campfire light With the ghost of old Tom Joad.

Send forth the child and childish man together, and blush for the pride that libels our own old happy state, and gives its title to an ugly and distorted image.

I revere the memory of Mr. F. as an estimable man and most indulgent husband, only necessary to mention Asparagus and it appeared or to hint at any little delicate thing to drink and it came like magic in a pint bottle; it was not ecstasy but it was comfort.

Our whole past experience is continually in our consciousness, though most of it sunk to a great depth of dimness. I think of consciousness as a bottomless lake, whose waters seem transparent, yet into which we can clearly see but a little way.

A good liar must have a good memory. Kissinger is a stupendous liar with a remarkable memory.

My blessed California, you are so wise. You render death abstract, efficient, clean. Your afterlife is only real estate, And in his kingdom Death must stay unseen.

As a child, I was more afraid of tetanus shots than, for example, Dracula.

It began probably when I was about five years old, putting on my mother's lipstick.

The man who has received a benefit ought always to remember it, but he who has granted it ought to forget the fact at once.

Pithy sentences are like sharp nails which force truth upon our memory.

The first time I saw Bruce he was opening up for Jethro Tull, before he had a record deal. I went to see Bruce because I was singing in that area with different bands and I wanted to get in a good rock band and he had the best rock band.

Death: 'I have watched life's light flicker, and at once fade from their eyes as they passed from this world. I have sat silent and frightened, with tears streaming from my eyes as I tried to grasp some salient thought about the absence of their breath. I have collected stories from these people, many of whom exist only as a memory in my mind, and a sentiment in my poetry.'

I just want that one day, when I retire, that people still remember me like they remember Buster. I really want someone to respect me the way they respect Buster.

I have had worse partings, but none that so Gnaws at my mind still.

Yet there was round thee such a dawn Of light, ne'er seen before, As fancy never could have drawn, And never can restore.

Oh god, that was like f--king 1112 years ago. Do you miss it?

The story of Soundgarden is my own story in a way, so why should I be afraid to talk about it? There's always a question that leads back to Soundgarden and I'm proud that I was part of the band, so why should I mind talking about it? After all, it was a great time for the most part of it.

One of us sings in the street, and we listen to him; The words ring over us like vague bells of sorrow. He sings of a house he lived in long ago. It is strange; this house of dust was the house I lived in; The house you lived in, the house that all of us know.

And we recall, with a gleaming stab of sadness, Vaguely and incoherently, some dream Of a world we came from, a world of sun-blue hills . . . A black wood whispers around us, green eyes gleam; Someone cries in the forest, and someone kills.

'I am the one who stood beside you and smiled, Thinking your face so strangely young . . . ' 'I am the one who loved you but did not dare.'

'I am the one you saw to-day, who fell Senseless before you, hearing a certain bell: A bell that broke great memories in my brain.' 'I am the one who passed unnoticed before you, Invisible, in a cloud of secret pain.'

His thoughts were blown and scattered like leaves; He thought of the pail . . . Why, then, was it forgotten? Because he would not need it?

Let us retrace our steps: I have deceived you: Nothing is here I could not frankly tell you: No hint of guilt, or faithlessness, or threat. Dreams-they are madness. Staring eyes-illusion. Let us return, hear music, and forget . . .

Of what she said to me that night-no matter. The strange thing came next day. My brain was full of music-something she played me-; I couldn't remember it all, but phrases of it Wreathed and wreathed among faint memories, Seeking for something, trying to tell me something, Urging to restlessness: verging on grief. I tried to play the tune, from memory,- But memory failed: the chords and discords climbed And found no resolution-only hung there, And left me morbid . . . Where, then, had I heard it? . . .

The music ends. The screen grows dark. We hurry To go our devious secret ways, forgetting Those many lives . . . We loved, we laughed, we killed, We danced in fire, we drowned in a whirl of sea-waves. The flutes are stilled, and a thousand dreams are stilled.

Once I loved, and she I loved was darkened. Again I loved, and love itself was darkened. Vainly we follow the circle of shadowy days. The screen at last grows dark, the flutes are silent. The doors of night are closed. We go our ways.

Like the intricately rational web of theology woven around the irrational mysteries of faith, the sober explanations of institutions for hoarding literary relics seem like elegant post-factum justifications for what is essentially a sense of sacred awe. An institution of learning seeks significant manuscripts because they possess qualities that scholarship cannot entirely reproduce - an authentic, holistic connection with the great writers of the past. It is not the intellectual content of the manuscript that is important but its material presence - ink spots, tobacco stains, pinworm holes, and foxing included.

Poems should be memorized, recited, and performed. The sheer joy of the art must be emphasized. The pleasure of performance is what first attracts children to poetry, the sensual excitement of speaking and hearing the words of the poem. Performance was also the teaching technique that kept poetry vital for centuries. Maybe it also holds the key to poetry's future.

I did not want my son remembered by uncontrolled howls of pain. My wife and I suffered more than I can express, but to make poems merely out of the agony would have been self-pitying and dishonest. My son had been my greatest joy. His birth had left me awe-struck and humble before life. He turned me from a son into a father - and allowed me to understand my own father clearly for the first time. If I mourned him, I also wanted to preserve the joyful mystery of his existence. The sorrow could not be adequately appreciated without also expressing the joy and wonder.

The fightinest Marine I ever knew.

When all desire at last and all regret Go hand in hand to death, and all is vain, What shall assuage the unforgotten pain And teach the unforgetful to forget?

Thou fill'st from the winged chalice of the soul Thy lamp, O Memory, fire-winged to its goal.

It's unfortunate that [ Nirvana ] ended [with Kurt Cobain's suicide], because ultimately it just leaves everyone with this question mark, you know, everybody involved. So it really was a horrible ending to something beautiful. What it does is it leads everyone to believe that the band walked with a black cloud over our heads the whole time. But it was fun. So much of it was really fun.

Do you remember, your President Nixon? Do you remember, the bills you have to pay Or even yesterday?

I was the first to see him, for I grew out on the pasture slope, beyond the forest. He was a man, it seemed. . .

It is said he made his earth-journey, and lost what he sought. It is said they felled him and cut up his limbs for firewood. And it is said his head still sang and was swept out to sea singing.

Perhaps he will not return. But what we have lived comes back to us. We see more. We feel, as our rings increase, something that lifts our branches, that stretches our furthest leaf-tips further.

The wind, the birds, do not sound poorer but clearer, recalling our agony, and the way we danced.

None of them rhymed much I don't think. Well, perhaps a few did. I can't quite be sure now. I think I wrote most of them while I was stoned.

'I shall never forget that event - a boy was brutally killed by a Cossack with his sabre.'

The Blessing of my later years Was with me when a boy: She gave me eyes, she gave me ears; And humble cares, and delicate fears; A heart, the fountain of sweet tears; And love, and thought, and joy.

Once in everyone's life there is apt to be a period when he is fully awake, instead of half asleep. I think of those five years in Maine as the time when this happened to me ... I was suddenly seeing, feeling, and listening as a child sees, feels, and listens. It was one of those rare interludes that can never be repeated, a time of enchantment. I am fortunate indeed to have had the chance to get some of it down on paper.

Hast thou not torn the Naiad from her flood, The Elfin from the green grass, and from me The summer dream beneath the tamarind tree?

'Doubtless,' said I, 'what it utters is its only stock and store, Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore.

C'est tres bien de copier ce qu'on voit, c'est beaucoup mieux de dessiner ce que l'on ne voit plus que dans son memoire. C'est une transformation pendant laquelle l'ingeniosite collabore avec la memoire. Vous ne reproduisez que ce qui vous a frappe, c'est-a-dire le necessaire.

The poet is a brother speaking to a brother of 'a moment of their other lives' - a moment that had been buried beneath the dust of the busy world.

Forgiving sins, I should have known, is not blotting them out. The blood of Christ only turns them red instead of black. It leaves them in the record. It leaves them in the memory.

The difference between the past and present selves of the same individual is so great as to make them different persons for all moral purposes. That single fact we were just speaking of-the fact that no man would care for vengeance on one who had injured him, provided he knew that all memory of the offence had been blotted utterly from his enemy's mind-proves the entire proposition. It shows that it is not the present self of his enemy that the avenger is angry with at all, but the past self. Even in the blindness of his wrath he intuitively recognizes the distinction between the two.

In records that defy the tooth of time.

The cypress stood up like a church That night we felt our love would hold, And saintly moonlight seemed to search And wash the whole world clean as gold; The olives crystallized the vales' Broad slopes until the hills grew strong: The fireflies and the nightingales Throbbed each to either, flame and song. The nightingales, the nightingales.

Hush, call no echo up in further proof Of desolation! there's a voice within That weeps . . . as thou must sing . . . alone, aloof.

Here's ivy! -take them, as I used to do Thy flowers, and keep them where they shall not pine. Instruct thine eyes to keep their colours true, And tell thy soul, their roots are left in mine.

It is a wary business, walking about a strange house you are to know well. Only cats and dogs with their more expressive bodies enact the tension we share with them at such times. The you inside you gathers up defensively: something is stealing upon you every moment; you will never be quite the same again. These new unsmiling lights, reflections and objects are to become your memories, riveted to you closer than friends or lovers, going with you, even, into the grave: worse, they may become dear and fasten like so many leeches on your heart.

I remember one day I was coming home from kindergarten I--well, I thought it was kindergarten, it turned out later I'd been working in a factory for two years... I was wondering 'cause it was always really hot and everyone was older than me, but, um, what did I know?

The first true love that folded at the slightest touch, brought down like an old hotel, people digging through the rubble for things they can resell.

I wasn't just a fan, I was his brother. He said I was good and I said he was good; we never argued about that. Elvis was a hard worker, dedicated, and God loved him. Last time I saw him was at Graceland. We sang Old Blind Barnabus together, a gospel song. I love him and hope to see him in heaven. There'll never be another like that soul brother.

Memory deficiency got so bad with me, I forgot to repeat a piece of gossip I swore on my Grandmother's Grave never to divulge.

There was the tiger, for instance. That was Kaltenbrunner, the terrible successor to Heydrich, the man of burning hate, the man with the sharp lawyer's brain. Of the quartet, Ernst Kaltenbrunner will haunt our memories the longest. He was the perfect Hollywood Nazi, lean-faced, cold-eyed, harsh-voiced, always under perfect control. A stubborn man and a strong man. As he sat there before us in the interrogation room in the Nuremberg Palace of Justice, we were fascinated by the deliberate way in which he clamped his lower lip over his upper lip as if to make sure that no word should escape him except when he wished to speak.

As far as I remember, he was there two, three, or four times. At any rate, during the last months of the war I saw him two, three, or four times. Kaltenbrunner never said a word there. As far as I remember, he just listened and stood about.

I feel a sort of yearnin' 'nd a chokin' in my throat When I think of Red Hoss Mountain 'nd of Casey's tabble dote!

The little toy dog is covered with dust, But sturdy and stanch he stands; And the little toy soldier is red with rust, And his musket moulds in his hands. Time was when the little toy dog was new, And the soldier was passing fair; And that was the time when our Little Boy Blue Kissed them and put them there.

'I have been here before,' I said; I had been there before; first with Sebastian more than twenty years ago on a cloudless day in June, when the ditches were creamy with meadowsweet and the air heavy with all the scents of summer; it was a day of peculiar splendour, and though I had been there so often, in so many moods, it was to that first visit that my heart returned on this, my latest.

This somewhat unpleasant tale, published as a novelette in the 'Smart Set' in July, 1920, relates a series of events which took place in the spring of the previous year. Each of the three events made a great impression upon me. In life they were unrelated, except by the general hysteria of that spring which inaugurated the Age of Jazz, but in my story I have tried, unsuccessfully I fear, to weave them into a pattern-a pattern which would give the effect of those months in New York as they appeared to at least one member of what was then the younger generation.

Mr. In and Mr. Out are not listed by the census-taker. You will search for them in vain through the social register or the births, marriages, and deaths, or the grocer's credit list. Oblivion has swallowed them and the testimony that they ever existed at all is vague and shadowy, and inadmissible in a court of law. Yet I have it upon the best authority that for a brief space Mr. In and Mr. Out lived, breathed, answered to their names and radiated vivid personalities of their own. During the brief span of their lives they walked in their native garments down the great highway of a great nation; were laughed at, sworn at, chased, and fled from. Then they passed and were heard of no more.

They grew in beauty side by side, They filled one home with glee: Their graves are severed far and wide By mount and stream and sea.

Cato said the best way to keep good acts in memory was to refresh them with new.

It is the thousandth forgetting of a dream dreamt a thousand times and forgotten a thousand times, and who can damn us merely for forgetting for the thousandth time?

This feat of Tell, the archer, will be told While yonder mountains stand upon their base. By heaven! The apple's cleft right through the core.

I see before me the father of my parents.

'Det finns ingenting som inte hant, men mycket som inte berattats.'