Quotations About Memory

The leaves of memory seemed to make
A mournful rustling in the dark.
~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow


Memory... is the diary that we all carry about with us. ~Oscar Wilde, "The Importance of Being Earnest"


Pleasure is the flower that passes; remembrance, the lasting perfume. ~Jean de Boufflers


One need not be a chamber to be haunted;
One need not be a house;
The brain has corridors surpassing
Material place.
~Emily Dickinson, "Time and Eternity"


I have memories - but only a fool stores his past in the future. ~David Gerrold


It was one of those perfect English autumnal days which occur more frequently in memory than in life. ~P.D. James


And even if you were in some prison, the walls of which let none of the sounds of the world come to your senses - would you not then still have your childhood, that precious, kingly possession, that treasure-house of memories? ~Rainer Maria Rilke


A happy childhood can't be cured. Mine'll hang around my neck like a rainbow, that's all, instead of a noose. ~Hortense Calisher, Queenie, 1971


Everybody needs his memories. They keep the wolf of insignificance from the door. ~Saul Bellow


Memory itself is an internal rumour. ~George Santayana, The Life of Reason Memory is a way of holding onto the things you love, the things you are, the things you never want to lose. ~From the television show The Wonder Years


A memory is what is left when something happens and does not completely unhappen. ~Edward de Bono


Every man's memory is his private literature. ~Aldous Huxley


God gave us memories that we might have roses in December. ~J.M. Barrie, Courage, 1922


Memory is a child walking along a seashore. You never can tell what small pebble it will pick up and store away among its treasured things. ~Pierce Harris, Atlanta Journal


We do not remember days; we remember moments. ~Cesare Pavese, The Burning Brand


There are lots of people who mistake their imagination for their memory. ~Josh Billings