Quotes about Memory

He who is greedy of credit and reputation after his death, doth not consider, that they themselves by whom he is remembered, shall soon after every one of them be dead; and they likewise that succeed those; until at last all memory, which hitherto by the succession of men admiring and soon after dying hath had its course, be quite extinct.

How quickly all things disappear, in the universe the bodies themselves, but in time the remembrance of them;

Come tutte le cose rapidamente svaniscano, nel cosmo i corpi stessi, nel tempo il loro ricordo;

All things fade and quickly turn to myth: quickly too utter oblivion drowns them. And I am talking of those who shone with some wonderful brilliance: the rest, once they have breathed their last, are immediately 'beyond sigh, beyond knowledge'. But what in any case is everlasting memory? Utter emptiness.

Liberty is rendered even more precious by the recollection of servitude.

Some people will say that memory fades away as the years pass. Of course it does if you don't exercise it or aren't very bright to begin with. -- How to grow old: ancient wisdom for the second half of life.

When they're gone out of his head, these words, they'll be gone, everywhere, forever. As if they had never been.

You don't look back along time but down through it, like water. Sometimes this comes to the surface, sometimes that, sometimes nothing. Nothing goes away.

Where do the words go when we have said them?

While in a vintage restaurant...the past isn't quaint while you're in it. Only at a safe distance, later, when you see it as decor, not as the shape your life's been squeezed into.

But unshed tears can turn rancid. So can memory. So can biting your tongue. My bad nights were beginning. I couldn't sleep.

The hands reaching in among the leaves and spines were once my mother's. I've passed them on. Decades ahead, you'll study your own temporary hands, and you'll remember. Don't cry, this is what happens.