M is for MEMORY

The memory is perpetually looking back when we have nothing present to entertain us. It is like those repositories in animals that are filled with food, on which they may ruminate when their present pastures fail.
- Joseph Addison

Memory is the mother of all wisdom.
- Aeschylus

Far from our eyes th' Enchanting Objects set,
Advantage by the friendly Distance get.
- Guillaume Alexis, A poem against Fruition,
from "Poems by Several Hands" published 1685

Memories are hunting horns whose sound dies on the wind.
- Guillaume Apollinaire

I do perceive that the old proverb be not alwaies trew, for I do finde that the absence of my Nath, doth breeds in me the more continuall remembrance of him.
- Lady Anne Bacon, To Jane Lady Cornwallis



Several sorts of memory exist in us; body and mind each possesses one peculiar to itself. Nostalgia, for instance, is a malady of the physical memory.
- Honore de Balzac

Memory is the cabinet of imagination, the treasury of reason, the registry of conscience and the council-chamber of thought.
- Giambattista Basile

Tell me the tales that to me were so dear,
Long, long ago, long, long ago.
- Thomas Haynes Bayly (Bayley),
Long, Long Ago

Oh, I have roamed o'er many lands,
And many friends I've met;
Not one fair scene or kindly smile
Can this fond heart forget.
- Thomas Haynes Bayly (Bayley),
O, Steer my Bark to Erin's Isle



Memory can glean, but can never renew. It brings us joys faint as is the perfume of the flowers, faded and dried, of the summer that is gone.
- Henry Ward Beecher

The charm, one might say the genius, of memory is that it is choosy, chancy and temperamental; it rejects the edifying cathedral and indelibly photographs the small boy outside, chewing a hunk of melon in the dust.
- Elizabeth Bowen

A memory without blot or contamination must be an exquisite treasure, an inexhaustible source of pure refreshment.
- Charlotte Bronte (used pseudonym Currer Bell)

In that instant, o'er his soul
Winters of Memory seem'd to roll,
And gather in that drop of time
A life of pain, an age of crime.
O'er him who loves, or hates, or fears,
Such moment pours the grief of years.
- Lord Byron (George Gordon Noel Byron)



Slight withal may be the things which bring back on the heart the weight which it would fling aside forever.
- Lord Byron (George Gordon Noel Byron)

We ne'er forget, tho' there we are forgot.
- Lord Byron (George Gordon Noel Byron)

Yet how much less it were to gain,
Though thou hast left me free,
The loveliest things that still remain,
Than thus remember thee.
- Lord Byron (George Gordon Noel Byron),
And Thou art Dead as Young and Fair

To live in hearts we leave behind,
Is not to die.
- Thomas Campbell, Hallowed Ground (st. 6)



How a thing grows in the human memory, in the human imagination, when love, worship, and all that lies in the human heart, is there to encourage it.
- Thomas Carlyle

Though sands be black and bitter black the sea,
Night lie before me and behind me night,
And God within far Heaven refuse to light
The consolation of the dawn for me,--
Between the shadowy burns of Heaven and Hell,
It is enough love leaves my soul to dwell
With memory.
- Madison Julius Cawein, The End of All

Memory is the treasury and guardian of all things.
[Lat., Memoria est thesaurus omnium rerum e custos.]
- Cicero (Marcus Tullius Cicero) (often called "Tully" for short),
De Oratore (I, 5)

Memory, bosom-spring of joy.
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge



How are such an infinite number of things placed with such order in the memory, notwithstanding the tumult, marches, and counter-marches of the animal spirits?
- Jeremy Collier

Of all the faculties of the mind, memory is the first that flourishes and the first that dies.
- Charles Caleb Colton

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, Walking with God

Do not trust your memory; it is a net full of holes; the most beautiful prizes slip through it.
- Georges Duhamel



Memory is a paradise out of which fate cannot drive us.
- Alexandre Dumas fils

But woe to him, who left to moan,
Reviews the hours of brightness gone.
- Euripides, Iphigenia in Taurus (l. 1,121),
(translation by Anstice)

It is the treasure-house of the mind, wherein the monuments thereof are kept and preserved.
- Thomas Fuller (1)

Where'er I roam, whatever realms to see,
My heart untravelled, fondly turns to thee;
Still to my brother turns, with ceaseless pain,
And drags at each remove a lengthening chain.
- Oliver Goldsmith, The Traveller (l. 7)



The things we remember best are those better forgotten.
- Baltasar Gracian (used pseudonym Lorenzo Gracian)

A place in thy memory, Dearest!
Is all that I claim:
To pause and look back when thou hearest
The sound of my name.
- Gerald Griffin,
A Place in Thy Memory, Dearest

The memory of past favors is like a rainbow, bright, vivid, and beautiful; but it soon fades away. The in memory of injuries is engraved on the heart, and remains forever.
- Thomas Chandler Haliburton (used pseudonym Sam Slick)

We can remember minutely and precisely only the things which never really happened.
- Eric Hoffer



Where is the heart that doth not keep,
Within its inmost core,
Some fond remembrance hidden deep,
Of days that are no more?
- Ellen C. Howarth ("Clementine"),
'Tis but a Little Faded Flower

A sealed book, at whose contents we tremble.
- Letitia Elizabeth Landon (Mrs. George MacLean)

A lot of people mistake a short memory for a clear conscience.
- Doug Larson

Memory is ever active, ever true. Alas, if it were only as easy to forget!
- Ninon de L'Enclos (real name Anne L'Enclos)



How can such deep-imprinted images sleep in us at times, till a word, a sound, awake them?
- Ephraim Gotthold Lessing

Memory is the power to revive again in our minds those ideas which after imprinting have disappeared, or have been laid aside out of sight.
- John Locke (1)

This memory brightens o'er the past,
As when the sun concealed
Behind some cloud that near us hangs,
Shines on a distant field.
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow,
A Gleam of Sunshine

The heart hath its own memory, like the mind,
And in it are enshrined
The precious keepsakes, into which is wrought
The giver's loving thought.
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow,
From My Arm-Chair (st. 12)



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,
Tales of a Wayside Inn
(pt. III--Interlude before "The Mother's Ghost")

Experience teaches that a good memory is generally joined to a weak judgment.
[Fr., Il se veoid par experience, que les memoires excellentes se joignent volontiers aux jugements debiles.]
- Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, Essays (I, 9)

Through the shadowy past, like a tomb-searcher, memory ran, lifting each shroud that time had cast o'er buried hopes.
- Thomas Moore

To live with them is far less sweet,
Than to remember thee!
- Thomas Moore,
I Saw Thy Form in Youthful Prime



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, Oft in the Stilly Night

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, Song--From Juvenile Poems

All to myself I think of you,
Think of the things we used to do,
Think of the things we used to say,
Think of each happy bygone day.
Sometimes I sigh, and sometimes I smile,
But I keep each olden, golden while
All to myself.
- Wilbur D. Nesbit, All to Myself

Many a man fails to become a thinker for the sole reason that his memory is too good.
- Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Maxims



For memory is a moral action, a choice. You can choose to remember. You can choose not.
- Joyce Carol Oates, The Deaths: An Elegy

Lovers remember everything.
[Lat., Meminerunt omnia amantes.]
- Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso)

When time has assuaged the wounds of the mind, he who unseasonably reminds us of them, opens them afresh.
[Lat., At cum longa dies sedavit vulnera mentis,
Intempestive qui fovet illa novat.]
- Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso),
Epistoloe Ex Ponto (IV, 11, 19)

We do not remember days; we remember moments.
- Cesare Pavese,
Burning Brand Diaries 1935-1950



The richness of life lies in memories we have forgotten.
- Cesare Pavese,
This Business of Living: Diaries 1935-50

There are moments of life that we never forget,
Which brighten, and brighten, as time steals away;
They give a new charm to the happiest lot,
And they shine on the gloom of the loneliest day.
- James Gates Percival

Memory is not so brilliant as hope, but it is more beautiful, and a thousand times more true.
- George Denison Prentice

The pure memories given
To help our joy on earth, when earth is past
Shall help our joy in heaven.
- Margaret Junkin Preston



Time, which changes people, does not alter the image we have retained of them.
- Marcel Proust

Good things have to be engraved on the memory; bad ones stick there of themselves.
- Charles Reade

Lull'd in the countless chambers of the brain,
Our thoughts are link'd by many a hidden chain;
Awake but one, and lo, what myriads rise!
Each stamps its image as the other flies!
- Samuel Rogers

Sweet memory, wafted by the gentle gale,
Oft up the stream of Time I turn my sail,
To view the fairy haunts of long-lost hours,
Blest with far greener shades, far fresher flowers.
- Samuel Rogers



Hail, memory, hail! in thy exhaustion mine
From age to age unnumbered treasures shine!
Thought and her shadowy brood thy call obey,
And Place and Time are subject to thy sway!
- Samuel Rogers, Pleasures of Memory
(pt. II, l. 428)

I have a room whereinto no one enters
Save I myself alone:
There sits a blessed memory on a throne,
There my life centres.
- Christina Georgina Rossetti, Memory
(pt. II)

I wept for memory.
- Christina Georgina Rossetti,
Song--She Sat and Sang Always

I'm always fascinated by the way memory diffuses fact.
- Diane Sawyer



And scenes, long fast, of joy and pain,
Came wildering o'er his aged brain.
- Sir Walter Scott

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.
- Sir Walter Scott, Marmion
(introduction to canto IV)

Still so gently o'er me stealing,
Mem'ry will bring back the feeling,
Spite of all my grief revealing
That I love thee,--that I dearly love thee still.
- Augustin Eugene Scribe,
Opera of La Sonnambula

Memory, the warder of the brain!
- William Shakespeare



Remember thee?
Ay, thou poor ghost, while memory holds a seat
In this distracted globe. Remember thee?
Yea, from the table of my memory
I'll wipe away all trivial fond records,
All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past
That youth and observation copied there,
And thy commandment all alone shall live
Within the book and volume of my brain,
Unmixed with baser matter.
- William Shakespeare,
Hamlet Prince of Denmark
(Hamlet at I, v)

Thou comest as the memory of a dream,
Which now is sad because it hath been sweet.
- Percy Bysshe Shelley, Prometheus Unbound
(act II, sc. 1)

Ah, how much less all living loves to me,
Than that one rapture of remembering thee.
[Lat., Heu quanto minus est cum reliquis versari quam tui meminisse.]
- William Shenstone,
Latin epitaph to Mary Dolman, his cousin, on an ornamental urn



Our memories are independent of our wills.
- Richard Brinsley Sheridan

The Right Honorable gentleman is indebted to his memory for his jests and to his imagination for his facts.
- attributed to Richard Brinsley Sheridan,
in report of a "Speech in Reply to Mr. Dundas"

A man's real possession is his memory. In nothing else is he rich, in nothing else is he poor.
- Alexander Smith

O memory, thou bitter sweet,--both a joy and a scourge!
- Madame de Stael (Baronne Anne Louise Germaine de Stael-Holstein)



There is nothing steadfast in life but our memories. We are sure of keeping intact only that which we have lost.
- Madame Anne Sophie Swetchine (Soimonoff)

I shall remember while the light lives yet
And in the night time I shall not forget.
- Algernon Charles Swinburne, Erotion

The powerful hold in deep remembrance an ill-timed pleasantry.
[Lat., Facetiarum apud praepotentes in longum memoria est.]
- Tacitus (Caius Cornelius Tacitus), Annales
(V, 2)

The course of none has been along so beaten a road that they remember not fondly some resting-places in their journeys, some turns of their path in which lovely prospects broke in upon them, some soft plats of green refreshing to their weary feet. Confiding love, generous friendship, disinterested humanity, require no recondite learning, no high imagination, to enable an honest heart to appreciate and feel them.
- Sir Thomas Noon Talfourd (Talford)



The sweet remembrance of the just
Shall flourish when he sleeps in dust.
- Nahum Tate and Nicholas Brady,
A New Version of the Psalms of David
(psalm 112, st. 6),
(a paraphrase of Psalm 112)

A land of promise, a land of memory,
A land of promise flowing with the milk
And honey of delicious memories!
- Lord Alfred Tennyson, The Lover's Tale
(l. 333)

I will make you always remember this place, this day, and me.
[Lat., Faciam, hujus, loci, dieique, meique semper memineris.]
- Terence (Publius Terentius Afer), Eunuchus
(V, 7, 31)

It is an old saying, that we forget nothing, as people in fever begin suddenly to talk the language of their infancy; we are stricken by memory sometimes, and old affections rush back on us as vivid as in the time when they were our daily talk, when their presence gladdened our eyes, when their accents thrilled in our ears,--when with passionate tears and grief, we flung ourselves upon their hopeless corpses. Parting is death,--at least, as far as life is concerned. A passion comes to an end; it is carried off in a coffin, or, weeping in a postchaise, it drops out of life one way or the other, and the earth-clods close over it, and we see it no more. But it has been part of our souls, and it is eternal.
- William Makepeace Thackeray



He is blessed over all mortals who loses no moment of the passing life in remembering the past.
- Henry David Thoreau

Perhaps the remembrance of these things will prove a source of future pleasure.
[Lat., Forsan et haec olim meminisse juvabit.]
- Virgil or Vergil (Publius Virgilius Maro Vergil),
The Aeneid (I, 203)

As the dew to the blossom, the bud to the bee,
As the scent to the rose, are those memories to me.
- Mrs. Amelia Ball Welby (nee Coppuck),
Pulpit Eloquence

Out of the cradle endlessly rocking,
Out of the mocking bird's throat, the musical shuttle,
. . . .
A reminiscence sing.
- Walt Whitman, Sea-Drift



Grant but memory to us, and we can lose nothing by death.
- John Greenleaf Whittier

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, Memories (st. 4)

Memory is the diary that we all carry about with us.
- Oscar Wilde (Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde)

Most modern calendars mar the sweet simplicity of our lives by reminding us that each day that passes is the anniversary of some perfectly uninteresting event.
- Oscar Wilde (Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde)



In literature and art memory is a synonyme for invention. It is the life-blood of imagination, which faints and dies when the veins are empty.
- Robert Aris Willmott

No canvas absorbs color like memory.
- Robert Aris Willmott

And when the stream
Which overflowed the soul was passed away,
A consciousness remained that it had left,
Deposited upon the silent shore
Of memory, images and precious thoughts,
That shall not die, and cannot be destroyed.
- William Wordsworth, Excursion (bk. VII)

The vapours linger round the Heights,
They melt, and soon must vanish;
One hour is theirs, nor more is mine,--
Sad thought, which I would banish,
But that I know, where'er I go,
Thy genuine image, Yarrow!
Will dwell with me,--to heighten joy,
And cheer my mind in sorrow.
- William Wordsworth, Yarrow Visited