All Quotes By Tag: Memory

“I got an image in my head that never got out. We see a great many things and can remember a great many things, but that is different. We get very few of the true images in our heads of the kind I am talking about, the kind that become more and more vivid for us as if the passage of the years did not obscure their reality but, year by year, drew off another veil to expose a meaning which we had only dimly surmised at first. Very probably the last veil will not be removed, for there are not enough years, but the brightness of the image increases and our conviction increases that the brightness is meaning, or the legend of meaning, and without the image our lives would be nothing except an old piece of film rolled on a spool and thrown into a desk drawer among the unanswered letters.”

“The point, I decided, wasn’t to have the autobiography or even the memories. The point was who I became when I wrote.”

“Stored personal memories along with handed down collective memories of stories, legends, and history allows us to collate our interactions with a physical and social world and develop a personal code of survival. In essence, we all become self-styled sages, creating our own book of wisdom based upon our studied observations and practical knowledge gleaned from living and learning. What we quickly discover is that no textbook exist how to conduct our life, because the world has yet to produce a perfect person – an ideal observer – whom is capable of handing down a concrete exemplar of epistemic virtues. We each draw upon the guiding knowledge, theories, and advice available for us in order to explore the paradoxes, ironies, inconsistencies, and the absurdities encountered while living in a supernatural world. We mold our personal collection of information into a practical practicum how to live and die. Each day we define and redefine who we are, determine how we will react today, and chart our quest into an uncertain future.”

“Every impression ever made on a person from newborn babyhood onwards will contribute to the shape and texture of the imagination.”

“It’s one of the great fallacies, it seems to me,” said Lee, “that time gives much of anything but years and sadness to a man.””And memory.””Yes, memory. Without that, time would be unarmed against us.”

“Open thy mind; take in what I explain and keep it there; because to understand is not to know, if thou dost not retain…”

“Never underestimate the magic of a memory. A life full of great memories is a rich one.”

“I have a shocking memory – I remember everything.”

“The past and the present are after all so close, so almost one, as if time were an artificial teasing out of a material which longs to join, to interpenetrate, and to become heavy and very small like some of those heavenly bodies scientists tell us of.”

“When we return to our elementary school playground or the site of our first kiss, we’re dropping in on our own history years later. Visiting those same places in the present not only collapses time, but also memory.”

“He decides it is better to die in Ireland than in Paris because in Ireland the outdoors looks like the outdoors and gravestones are mossy and chipped, and the letters wear down with the wind and the rain so everyone gets forgotten in time, and life flies on.”

“You see her as you see anyone in this world: distorted, warped, reflected, refracted, contorted, mutilated by time.”

“If some mystical clarity of thought came when you looked death in the eye, then I knew Morrie wanted to share it. And I wanted to remember it for as long as I could.”

“I remember when you’ll be a month old, and I’ll stumble out of bed to give you your 2:00 a.m. feeding.”

“History was, is, a one-way street. You have to keep walking forwards, but you don’t always need to look ahead. Sometimes you can just look around and be happy right where you are.”