Famous Quotes & Sayings

John Dryden

I am reading Jonson's verses to the memory of Shakespeare; an insolent, sparing, and invidious panegyric...

So often we rob tomorrow's memories by today's economies.

John Lubbock

Happy indeed is the naturalist: to him the seasons come round like old friends; to him the birds sing: as he walks along, the flowers stretch out from the hedges, or look up from the ground, and as each year fades away, he looks back on a fresh store of happy memories.

John Locke

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

It is reported of that prodigy of parts, Monsieur Pascal, that till the decay of his health had impaired his memory, he forgot nothing of what he had done, read, or thought, in any part of his rational age. This is a privilege so little known to most men, that it seems almost incredible to those who, after the ordinary way, measure all others by themselves; but yet, when considered, may help us to enlarge our thoughts towards greater perfections of it, in superior ranks of spirits.

John Locke

The senses at first let in particular Ideas, and furnish the yet empty Cabinet: And the Mind by degrees growing familiar with some of them, they are lodged in the Memory, and Names got to them.

John Lennon

For a long time I wasn't listening to music, to the rock and roll stuff on the radio, because it would cause me to get sweaty. It would bring back memories I didn't want to know about, or I would get that feeling that I'm not alive 'cause I'm not making it. And if it was good, I hated it 'cause I wasn't doing it. And if it was bad, I was furious 'cause I could've done it better...

John Lasseter

In computer animation, every detail has to be thought out, designed, modeled, shaded, placed and lit. The more you add, the more computer memory you need.

John Lancaster Spalding

To cultivate the memory we should confide to it only what we understand and love: the rest is a useless burden; for simply to know by rote is not to know at all.

John Lancaster Spalding

As memory may be a paradise from which we cannot be driven, it may also be a hell from which we cannot escape.

John le Carre

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold was the work of a wayward imagination brought to the end of its tether by political disgust and personal confusion. Fifty years on, I don't associate the book with anything that ever happened to me, save for one wordless encounter at London airport when a worn-out, middle-aged military kind of man in a stained raincoat slammed a handful of mixed foreign change on to the bar and in gritty Irish accents ordered himself as much Scotch as it would buy. In that moment, Alec Leamas was born. Or so my memory, not always a reliable informant, tells me.

John Lahr

Identity is memory; when memory disappears, the self dissolves and love with it.

John Knowles

Your war memories will be with you forever, you'll be asked about them thousands of times after the war is over. People will get their respect for you from that-partly from that, don't get me wrong-but if you can say that you were up front where there was some real shooting going on, then that will mean a whole lot to you in years to come.

John Banville

For memory, we use our imagination. We take a few strands of real time and carry them with us, then like an oyster we create a pearl around them.

Judith McNaught

Why did happy memories fade and blur until one could scarcely recall them at all, while horrible memories seemed to retain their blinding clarity and painful sharpness?

Judith McNaught

You will soon discover that in matters of the heart, memories are much kinder than reality

Josh Hartnett

I'm very 'spur of the moment'. I'm always trying to think of fun things to do to create a memory.

Joseph Hall

What I have done is worthy of nothing but silence and forgetfulness, but what God has done for me is worthy of everlasting and thankful memory.

Katherine Center

Maybe the past is supposed to fade-and that's actually a kindness of human memory.

Katherine Anne Porter

Now and again thousands of memories converge, harmonize, arrange themselves around a central idea in a coherent form, and I write a story.

Kara Walker

One of my earliest memories involves sitting on my dad’s lap in his studio in the garage of our house and watching him draw. I remember thinking: ‘I want to do that, too,’ and I pretty much decided then and there at age 2½ or 3 that I was an artist just like Dad.

Katharine McPhee

My fondest memories are generally the day after Thanksgiving. I get the total decorating Christmas itch.

Katharine Hepburn

The calla lilies are in bloom again. Such a strange flower—suitable to any occasion. I carried them on my wedding day, and now I place them here in memory of something that has died.

Karen Maitland

I wanted desperately to go on living in someone's memory. If we are not remembered, we are more than dead, for it is as if we had never lived

Karen Joy Fowler

The happening and telling are very different things. This doesn’t mean that the story isn’t true, only that I honestly don’t know anymore if I really remember it or only remember how to tell it. Language does this to our memories, simplifies, solidifies, codifies, mummifies. An off-told story is like a photograph in a family album. Eventually it replaces the moment it was meant to capture.

Josh Radnor

I kicked college nostalgia in my late 20s. As much as I loved college and treasure the memories, I no longer want to go back.

Joseph Conrad

We couldn't understand because we were too far... and could not remember because we were traveling in the night of first ages, those ages that had gone, leaving hardly a sign... and no memories.

Joseph Conrad

Vanity plays lurid tricks with our memory.

Joseph Conrad

We looked at the venerable stream not in the vivid flush of a short day that comes and departs forever, but in the august light of abiding memories.

Joseph Conrad

Vanity plays lurid tricks with our memory, and the truth of every passion wants some pretence to make it live.

Joshua Foer

As bad as we are at remembering names and phone numbers and word-for-word instructions from our colleagues, we have really exceptional visual and spatial memories.

Joshua Foer

We've outsourced our memories to digital devices, and the result is that we no longer trust our memories. We see every small forgotten thing as evidence that they're failing us.

Joshua Foer

I met with amnesiacs and savants, educators and scientists, to try to understand what memory is, why it works, why it sometimes doesn't, and what its potential might be.