Sunday, September 19, 2010 – The Persistence of Memory
It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backward. ~ Lewis Carroll
It is only by not paying one’s bills that one can hope to live in the memory of the commercial classes. ~ Oscar Wilde
I have the heart of a child. I keep it in a jar on my shelf. ~ Robert Bloch
It was one of those perfect English autumnal days which occur more frequently in memory than in life. ~P. D. James
Every man’s memory is his private literature. ~ Aldous Huxley
In memory everything seems to happen to music. ~ Tennessee Williams
We are able to find everything in our memory, which is like a dispensary or chemical laboratory in which chance steers our hand sometimes to a soothing drug and sometimes to a dangerous poison. ~ Marcel Proust
Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using his intelligence; he is just using his memory. ~ Leonardo da Vinci
A retentive memory may be a good thing, but the ability to forget is the true token of greatness. ~ Elbert Hubbard
I do have a blurred memory of sitting on the stairs and trying over and over again to tie one of my shoelaces, but that is all that comes back to me of school itself. ~ Roald Dahl
I was asked to memorize what I did not understand; and, my memory being so good, it refused to be insulted in that manner. ~ Aleister Crowley
Memory itself is an internal rumor. ~ George Santayana, The Life of Reason
A childhood is what anyone wants to remember of it. It leaves behind no fossils, except perhaps in fiction. ~ Carol Shields
When I was younger I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not. ~ Mark Twain
When I recall today my early youth, I should take the boy that I then was, with the exception of a few individual features, for a different person, were it not for the existence of the chain of memories. ~ Ernst Mach
Your brain forms roughly 10,000 new cells every day, but unless they hook up to preexisting cells with strong memories, they die. Serves them right. ~ Doug Coupland
The difference between false memories and true ones is the same as for jewels: it is always the false ones that look the most real, the most brilliant. ~ Salvador Dalí
If dreams are like movies, then memories are films about ghosts. ~ Adam Duritz
Nostalgia, the vice of the aged. We watch so many old movies our memories come in monochrome. ~ Angela Carter
All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was. ~ Toni Morrison
There are three side effects of acid: enhanced long-term memory, decreased short-term memory, and I forget the third. ~ Timothy Leary
I’ve been to too many Dead concerts. There’ve been smokin’ holes where my memory used to be. ~ Ken Kesey
The existence of forgetting has never been proved. We only know that some things don’t come to mind when we want them. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche
The richness of life lies in memories we have forgotten. ~ Cesare Pavese
A memory is what is left when something happens and does not completely unhappen. ~ Edward de Bono
Why is it that our memory is good enough to retain the least triviality that happens to us, and yet not good enough to recollect how often we have told it to the same person? ~ Francois de La Rochefoucauld
I have a memory like an elephant. In fact, elephants often consult me. ~ Noel Coward
The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting. ~ Milan Kundera
A lot of people mistake a short memory for a clear conscience. ~ Doug Larson
All vital truth contains the memory of all that for which it is not true. ~ D. H. Lawrence
Memory is a complicated thing, a relative to truth, but not its twin. ~ Barbara Kingsolver
Those who have known the famous are publicly debriefed of their memories, knowing as their own dusk falls that they will only be remembered for remembering someone else. ~ Alan Bennett
Time moves in one direction, memory in another. ~ William Gibson
One lives in the hope of becoming a memory. ~ Antonio Porchia
If, after I depart this vale, you ever remember me and have thought to please my ghost, forgive some sinner and wink your eye at some homely girl. ~ H. L. Mencken
Memory is the first casualty of middle age, if I remember correctly. ~ Candice Bergen
He is indebted to his memory for his jests and to his imagination for his facts. ~ Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Memory is funny. Once you hit a vein the problem is not how to remember but how to control the flow. ~ Tobias Wolff
Some men’s memory is like a box where a man should mingle his jewels with his old shoes. ~ George Savile
Memory is a crazy woman that hoards colored rags and throws away food. ~ Austin O’Malley
Everybody needs his memories. They keep the wolf of insignificance from the door. ~ Saul Bellow
Memory is the thing you forget with. ~ Alexander Chase
I think it would be interesting if old people got anti-Alzheimer’s disease where they slowly began to recover other people’s lost memories. ~ George Carlin
It is right that he too should have his little chronicle, his memories, his reason, and be able to recognize the good in the bad, the bad in the worst, and so grow gently old down all the unchanging days, and die one day like any other day, only shorter. ~ Samuel Beckett
Just Above Sunset 