Famous Quotes & Sayings

Francis Bacon

The general root of superstition is that men observe when things hit, and not when they miss, and commit to memory the one, and pass over the other.

Frances Mayes

Memory is, of course, a trickster.

Frances Mayes

The urge to travel feels magnetic. Two of my favorite words are linked: departure time. And travel whets the emotions, turns upside down the memory bank, and the golden coins scatter.

Frances Mayes

As travel pushes me forward, memory keeps dragging me backward.

Frances Mayes

Although I am a person who expected to be rooted in one spot forever, as it has turned out I love having the memories of living in many places.

George Washington

If to be venerated for benevolence, if to be admired for talents, if to be esteemed for patriotism, if to be beloved for philanthropy, can gratify the human mind, you must have the pleasing consolation to know that you have not lived in vain. And I flatter myself that it will not be ranked among the least grateful occurrences of your life to be assured that, so long as I retain my memory, you will be thought on with respect, veneration, and affection by your sincere friend.

George Santayana

The superiority of the distant over the present is only due to the mass and variety of the pleasures that can be suggested, compared with the poverty of those that can at any time be felt.

George Santayana

Memory... is an internal rumor.

George Santayana

History is nothing but assisted and recorded memory.

George Santayana

Parents lend children their experience and a vicarious memory; children endow their parents with a vicarious immortality.

George Santayana

Memory itself is an internal rumour.

George Santayana

Memory itself is an internal rumour; and when to this hearsay within the mind we add the falsified echoes that reach us from others, we have but a shifting and unseizable basis to build upon. The picture we frame of the past changes continually and grows every day less similar to the original experience which it purports to describe.

George Santayana

Old age is as forgetful as youth, and more incorrigible; it displays the same inattentiveness to conditions; its memory becomes self-repeating and degenerates into an instinctive reaction, like a bird's chirp.

George Santayana

The line between what is known scientifically and what has to be assumed in order to support knowledge is impossible to draw. Memory itself is an internal rumour.

George Orwell

The past is whatever the records and the memories agree upon.

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Know that I've forgotten precisely nothing; but I've driven it all out of my head for a time, even the memories--until I've radically improved my circumstances. Then...then you'll see, I'll rise from the dead!

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Even if we are occupied with important things and even if we attain honour or fall into misfortune, still let us remember how good it once was here, when we were all together united by a good and kind feeling which made us perhaps better than we are.

Fyodor Dostoevsky

I bless the rising sun each day, and, as before, my heart sings to meet it, but now I love even more its setting, its long slanting rays & the soft tender gentle memories that come with them...’ -Father Zossima

Fyodor Dostoevsky

If man has one good memory to go by, that may be enough to save him.

Fyodor Dostoevsky

But it is possible, it is possible: the old grief, by a great mystery of human life, gradually passes into quiet, tender joy; instead of young, ebullient blood comes a mild, serene old age: I bless the sun's rising each day and my heart sings to it as before, but now I love its setting even more, its long slanting rays, and with them quiet, mild, tender memories, dear images from the whole of a long and blessed life--and over all is God's truth, moving, reconciling, all-forgiving!

Fyodor Dostoevsky

There is nothing higher and stronger and more wholesome and useful for life in later years than some good memory, especially a memory connected with childhood, with home.

Friedrich Nietzsche

I know my fate. One day my name will be associated with the memory of something tremendous — a crisis without equal on earth, the most profound collision of conscience, a decision that was conjured up against everything that had been believed, demanded, hallowed so far. I am no man, I am dynamite.

Friedrich Nietzsche

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

Let old ones go. Dont be a memory-monger! Once you were young──now you are even younger.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Some people do not become thinkers simply because their memories are too good.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Many a man fails as an original thinker simply because his memory it too good.

Jeanette Winterson

Nothing can be forgotten. Nothing can be lost. The universe itself is one vast memory system. Look back and you will find the beginnings of the world.

Jeanette Winterson

Memory loss is one way of coping with damage.

Jerry Stiller

I've got a prostate the size of a honeydew and a head full of bad memories.

Jack Kerouac

I'll go to the south of Sicily in the winter, and paint memories of Arles – I'll buy a piano and Mozart me that – I'll write long sad tales about people in the legend of my life – This part is my part of the movie, let's hear yours

J. C. Ryle

There is not enough Bible-reading among us. It is not sufficient to have the Book. We must actually READ it, and PRAY over it ourselves. It will do us no good, if it only lies still in our houses. We must be actually familiar with its contents, and have its texts stored in our memories and minds. Knowledge of the Bible never comes by intuition. It can only be obtained by diligent, regular, daily, attentive, wakeful reading.

J. C. Ryle

The Gospel was not meant merely to reside in our intellect, memories, and tongues, but to be seen in our lives.

Isabel Allende

One of the characteristics of North American culture is that you can always start again. You can always move forward, cross a border of a state or a city or a county, and move West, most of the time West. You leave behind guilt, past traditions, memories. You are as if born again, in the sense of the snake: You leave your skin behind and you begin again. For most people in the world, that is totally impossible.