Memory Quotes
|
A great man quotes bravely, and will not draw on his invention when his memory serves him with a word as good.
|
More Memory Quotes
A thousand fantasies Begin to throng into my Memory Of calling shapes, and beckoning shadows dire, And airy tongues, that syllable men's names On sands, and shores, and desert wildernesses.
john milton— 1634 Comus, A Mask, l.204-8.
Some wonder why I have such a feeling of concern over the imposition of the death penalty. I ask those who wonder how would you feel if you defended a man charged with murder, who was as innocent as any hon. member in this House at this very moment, who was convicted; whose appeal was dismissed, who was executed; and six months later the star witness for the Crown admitted that he, himself, had committed the murder and blamed it on the accused? That experience will never be effaced from my Memory.
john diefenbaker— May 1, 1972, House of Commons.
To have some account of my thoughts, manners, acquaintance and actions, when the hour arrives in which time is more nimble than Memory, is the reason which induces me to keep a journal: a journal in which I must confess my every thought, must open my whole heart!
frances burney— The Early Journals and Letters of Fanny Burney, vol. 1, p. 1, journal entry, March 27, 1768.
The leaves of Memory seemed to make A mournful rustling in the dark.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow— The Fire of Drift-wood, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
To articulate the past historically does not mean to recognize it "the way it really was"...It means to seize hold of a Memory as it flashes up at a moment of danger.
walter benjamin— VI
All water has a perfect Memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was.
toni morrison— As quoted in Grace Notes (1989) by Rita Dove
For many years I believed that I remembered helping my grandfather drink his whisky toddy when I was six weeks old, but I do not tell about that any more, now; I am grown old, and my Memory is not as active as it used to be. When I was younger I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not; but my faculties are decaying, now, and soon I shall be so I cannot remember any but the latter. It is sad to go to pieces like this, but we all have to do it.
mark twain— p. 210. (Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 1 (2010))
If I forget, then it might as well never have happened. Memory is liberty.
charles stross— Chapter 13, “Climb” (p. 224)
Memory is the storehouse in which the substance of our knowledge is treasured up.
— Regarding Psalm 119:55
— Charles Bridges, An Exposition of Psalm 119, 1827.
Held in a lunar synthesis, Whispering lunar incantations Dissolve the floors of Memory And all its clear relations Its divisions and precisions.
— 1917 Prufrock and Other Observations,'Rhapsody on a Windy Night'.
A man's Memory is bound to be a distortion of his past in accordance with his present interests, and the most faithful autobiography is likely to mirror less what a man was than what he has become.
fawn brodie— No Man Knows My History, ch. 19 (1945)
Play Mozart in Memory of me— and I will hear you.
frédéric chopin— Murmured by Chopin on his death-bed.
I hid my love when young till ICouldn't bear the buzzing of a fly;I hid my love to my despiteTill I could not bear to look at light:I dare not gaze upon her faceBut left her Memory in each place;Where eer I saw a wild flower lieI kissed and bade my love good bye.
john clare— "Secret Love"
Let every man in mankind's frailtyConsider his last day; and let nonePresume on his good fortune until he findLife, at his death, a Memory without pain.
Sophocles— Variant: Look upon him, O my Thebans, on your king, the child of fame!This mighty man, this Œdipus the lore far-famed could guess,And envy from each Theban won, so great his lordliness—Lo to what a surge of sorrow and confusion hath he come!Let us call no mortal happy till our eyes have seen the doomAnd the death-day come upon him—till, unharassed by mischance,He pass the bound of mortal life, the goal of ordinance.[Tr. E. D. A. Morshead (1885)]
— Variant: People of Thebes, my countrymen, look on Oedipus.He solved the famous riddle, with his briliance,he rose to power, a man beyond all power.Who could behold his greatness without envy?Now what a black sea of terror has overwhelmed him.Now as we keep our watch and wait the final day,count no man happy till he dies, free of pain at last.[quoted by Thomas Cahill in Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea]
— Line 1529, Choragos.
They are all gone into the world of light! And I alone sit lingering here; Their very Memory is fair and bright, And my sad thoughts doth clear.
Henry Vaughan— "They Are All Gone," st. 1.
Die Hard represents the class of modern action pictures and the standard by which they must be judged. Few films falling into the "mindless entertainment" genre have as much going for them as this movie. Not only is it a thrill-a-minute ride, but it has one of the best film villains in recent Memory, a hero everyone can relate to, dialogue that crackles with wit, and a lot of very impressive pyrotechnics.
james berardinelli— Review of Die Hard (1988)
Now shall I become a common tale, A ruin'd fragment of a worn-out world; Unchanging record of unceasing change. Eternal landmark to the tide of time. Swift generations, that forget each other, Shall still keep up the Memory of my shame Till I am grown an unbelieved fable.
hartley coleridge— Prometheus.
Not the individual man nor a single generation by its own power can erect the bridge that leads to God. Faith is the achievement of many generations, and effort accumulated over many centuries. … There is a collective Memory of God in the human spirit, and it is this Memory which is the main source of our faith.
abraham joshua heschel— "The Holy Dimension", p. 333
"The Amyrlin understands the most complex of creeds and debates," Egwene said, quoting from Memory. "Yet in the end, she is the servant of all, even the lowest of laborers."
robert jordan— Egwene al'Vere, quoting Balladare Arandaille, the first Amyrlin raised from the Brown Ajah
Poetry, even when apparently most fantastic, is always a revolt against artifice, a revolt, in a sense, against actuality. It speaks of what seems fantastic and unreal to those who have lost the simple intuitions which are the test of reality; and, as it is often found at war with its age, so it makes no account of history, which is fabled by the daughters of Memory.
james joyce— "James Clarence Mangan" (1902), a lecture on Mangan delivered at the Literary and Historical Society, University College, Dublin (1 February 1902) and printed in the college magazine St. Stephen's.
They do not ill, being lords of ours, to slay Me; nay, they could not spare: but thee to slay, To spill thy strong young life for truth to me, In all men's eyes would mark them monstrous:;: thou Must live, and serve my slayers, and serving them Sustain my Memory by the proof if God Shall give thee grace to prove it that thy name, Thy father's name and mine, in true men's ears Rings truth, and means not treason.
algernon charles swinburne— Faliero, Act V. Sc. 3.
The Memory management on the PowerPC can be used to frighten small children.
linus torvalds— Source: quoted by Alan Cox here
Woe to that nation whose literature is cut short by the intrusion of force. This is not merely interference with freedom of the press but the sealing up of a nation's heart, the excision of its Memory.
— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Nobel lecture prepared for the Swedish Academy, not actually delivered as an address (1970), variant translation, as quoted in TIME (25 February 1974). Another translations is "Woe to that nation whose literature is disturbed by the intervention of power. Because that is not just a violation against "freedom of print", it is the closing down of the heart of the nation, a slashing to pieces of its memory".
We shall go according to the constant usage within Memory.
— Jefferies, C.J., Sacheverell's Case (1684), 10 How. St. Tr. 72.
The sin that now rises to Memory as your bosom sin, let this f1rst of all be withstood and mastered. Oppose it instantly by a detestation of it, by a firm will to conquer it, by reflection, by reason, and by prayer.
— William Ellery Channing, p. 551. (Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895))
It is notorious that the Memory strengthens as you lay burdens upon it, and becomes trustworthy as you trust it.
thomas de quincey— Thomas De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, 1821, pt. I.
Love is the emblem of eternity: it confounds all notion of time: effaces all Memory of a beginning, all fear of an end.
— Anne Louise Germaine de Staël, Corinne (1807), Book VIII, Chapter II.
