Memory

“ Memory has one, stranger still—filled with landscapes of imperishable interest! Who has not such a gallery in his own soul? Let Memory withdraw her folding-doors—and what do we see? The old homes of cherished infancy may be the first to crowd the walls and arrest the eye;—scenes of life's bright morning, the sun tipping with his rising beam the dim mountain-heights of the future! ”

“ Memory indeed changes from being the faint dream-shadow that we know, of things in the past, to being the things themselves, actual and ever present at our command; and with this finding of the inner soul and heart’s core of all beings it becomes possible to live over again with them the days gone by, in all detail and with ever deeper understanding of their true meaning. ”

“ It does not make us forget, only Memory is no longer recollection, it is passive, not active, and mixes real with feigned things, just as in perfectly still pools the images of clouds filter down through the transparent water and make one perspective with the matter-of-fact weeds at the bottom. ”

“ The Net of Memory
I cast the Net of Memory,
Man's torment and delight,
Over the level Sands of Youth
That lay serenely bright,
Their tranquil gold at times submerged
In the Spring Tides of Love's Delight. ”

“ The scenes of great account at which we have been present, on which we have gazed, in which, perchance, we have been actors, pale and fade away from the canvas of our brains; but so long as memory remains, there are slight gestures and passing expressions which recur to us again and again, and which will recur, till life leave us and the mould be heaped up over the spot where we lie. ”

“ I can even see them more clearly than when the memory of them was fresh and green, for, as the eyes of one’s body become dim and blurred, the eyes of memory become ever sharper and keener, so that not even the smallest thing escapes their sight. ”

“ If you will give the matter a moment's thought you'll see that memory is the highest faculty of the human mind. What becomes of all your reading, all your observation, your experience, study, investigations, discussions—in a rushing crescendo—if you have no memory? ”

“ And yet more noble, it seems to pass from itself, and to enter the memory, and to hover in a silvery transformation there, until the outward book is but a body and its soul and spirit are flown to you, and possess your memory like a spirit. ”

“ And upon no spot in the review of the past does one's memory dwell with so much intense emotion, as upon that thorny and tangled labyrinth through which the spirit wandered, 'bewildered, but not lost,' at the period when the necessity and duty of proving its own character first roused it to a sense of its responsibilities. You say most truly, that it is good to look at things at a distance, from new and various points of view. ”

“ Why, sir, I mean that a memory may be inherited just like a mole, a birthmark, a physical or a moral characteristic. Our brains, as a clever writer has expressed it, are like the rocks of the Sinaitic valley, all covered over with inscriptions written there by the long caravans of Thought. ”

“ All that we can remember is almost nothing. Memory is greater than we are, but memory is living and mortal as well. These letters, these unintelligible flowers, these bits of lace and of paper, what are they? ”

“ Peculiarities of Memory.—Memory is an illusive and elusive function at best. All of us have had the sensation of having a word, and particularly a name, on the tip of our tongues. We often know the first letter and sometimes the first syllable of it. What memory brings to us, however, may not always be the first syllable of a word or name, though we are prone to think it must be, and we may go looking for it in the dictionary of names only to discover after a time that we are many letters away from its beginning. ”

“ Memory, which seems often to constitute the mind itself, more, perhaps, than any other faculty, can set them so brightly before me, as if they were painted on a dark midnight sky with brushes dipped in the essence of living light. ”

“ But there is one object to which the mind and eye turn back yet again, and which by associations variously tender, pathetic, or amusing, lead memory off for a while to wander in the dreamy mazes of the past. ”

“ This incessant occupation and restless inquiry furnishes the memory with an abundant vocabulary: they recollect each object they have seen, and can retrace every path they have trodden; the ear greedily imbibes the conversations to which they are anxiously disposed to listen; that which they read, they verbally retain; they excel in quickness of perception and promptitude of memory, and appear to have every thing by heart ”

“ Before the mind’s eye, whether in sleep or waking, came images that one was to discover presently in some book one had never read, and after looking in vain for explanation to the current theory of forgotten personal memory, I came to believe in a great memory passing on from generation to generation. ”

“ I have the memory that recalls everything in proportion and sequence. I have often written that art is memory, is in great part memory, though not necessarily a recalling of mere personal experience: and the more deeply I live the more I see that this is so....
When you write, I mean imaginatively, you must write more and more with concentrated vision. Some time ago I re-read your Four Winds of the World; much of it is finely done, and in some of it your self lives, your own accent speaks. But you have it in you to do work far more ambitious. ”

“ Nor must it be overlooked that our memory holds vast treasures of knowledge of which we are utterly unconscious until, under certain circumstances, one or the other fact suddenly reappears before our mind's eye. ”

“ “If any one faculty of our nature may be called more wonderful than the rest, I do think it is memory. There seems something more speakingly incomprehensible in the powers, the failures, the inequalities of memory, than in any other of our intelligences. The memory is sometimes so retentive, so serviceable, so obedient; at others, so bewildered and so weak; and at others again, so tyrannic, so beyond control! We are, to be sure, a miracle every way; but our powers of recollecting and of forgetting do seem peculiarly past finding out.” ”

“ Have you not found memory an apotheosis or deification? The poor, short, lone fact dies at the birth. Memory catches it up into her heaven, and bathes it in [67] immortal waters. Then a thousand times over it lives and acts again, each time transfigured, ennobled. In solitude, in darkness, we tread over again the sunny walks of youth ”

“ My Father, I pray that it may be mine to have the recollection of happy deeds, and not the memory of unkept promises. Help me to remember that one act is worth a thousand intentions, and that memory is the storehouse that supplies old age. ”

“ The Past entirely belongs to memory, and memory perfects the infolding veil of character, events, and actions in the vesture of universality, through which the particular external or contingent detail is unable to penetrate. ”

“ After many years of travel and home-staying observation I have found that all worth remembrance, the salient things and scenes, emerge clearly out of myriad impressions, and become permanent in mind and memory. Things so emerging are typical at least, and probably true. ”

“ "I thought his memory was like the other memories of the dead that accumulate in every man's life,—a vague impress on the brain of shadows that had fallen on it in their swift and final passage; ”

“ It is as vivid in memory as anything that I have ever seen in the outward world, as distinct as any experience through which I have ever passed. Not all dreams are thus remembered. But some are. In the records of the mind, where the inner chronicle of life is written, they are intensely clear and veridical. ”

“ From sense, therefore, as we say, memory is produced, and from the repeated remembrance of the same thing we get experience.... From experience, or from every universal remaining in the soul--the one besides the many which in all of them is one and the same--the principles of art and science arise. ”

“ Every life-memory, every life-experience, is a common possession, and with a tone, a look, a gesture, a silent motion, as much of joy, sorrow, or reflection is aroused in their bosoms as we can bring about through long expositions and spluttering declamations. ”

“ Just as we have recognised in sight the sense of the understanding, and in hearing the sense of the reason, so we might call smell the sense of the memory, because it recalls to us more directly than any other the specific impression of an event or a scene even from the most distant past. ”

“ We may lay the physical basis of memory: while the wide-eyed babe stretches his little person with aimless kickings on his rug, he is receiving unconsciously those first impressions which form his earliest memories; and we can order those memories for him: we can see that the earliest sights he sees are sights of order, neatness, beauty ”

“ But, here the severe reader may justly tax me as a writer of short memory, a deficiency to which a true modern, cannot but, of necessity, be a little subject. Because, memory being an employment of the mind upon things past, is a faculty, for which the learned in our illustrious age, have no manner of occasion, who deal entirely with invention, and strike all things out of themselves, or at least by collision from each other: upon which account, we think it highly reasonable to produce our great forgetfulness, as an argument unanswerable for our great wit. ”

“ Memory is a rare ghost-raiser. Like a haunted house, its walls are ever echoing to unseen feet. Through the broken casements we watch the flitting shadows of the dead, and the saddest shadows of them all are the shadows of our own dead selves. ”

“ The Idea of Imagination.—We think of memory as reproducing the old, and of imagination, no less positively, as producing the new; the very word poet means the maker, and the word artist means the fitter or joiner. ”

“ The faculty, by which we repeat our impressions in the first manner, is called the MEMORY, and the other the IMAGINATION. It is evident at first sight, that the ideas of the memory are much more lively and strong than those of the imagination, and that the former faculty paints its objects in more distinct colours, than any which are employed by the latter. When we remember any past event, the idea of it flows in upon the mind in a forcible manner ”

“ To revisit a familiar spot is like walking among tombstones. Each point recalls a memory, and memory belongs to the past.”
“But when one’s memories are pleasant,” she argued, “it is good to recall them.”
“They come back to us with the dust on them,” he insisted. “It is more comfortable to live in the present. ”

“ Where the transition from one state to another is complete, memory is entirely lost; but there are cases in which the change, being either gradual or modified, the recollections of one life are carried more or less into the other. ”

“ Memory has many conveniences, and, among others, that of foreseeing things as they have afterwards happened. ”

“ This splendid vision dwelt in her memory as the most beautiful thing that it was possible to dream, so that now she strove to recall her sensation. That still lasted, however, but in a less exclusive fashion and with a deeper sweetness. ”

“ The heart hath its own memory, like the mind, And in it are enshrined The precious keepsakes, into which is wrought The giver's loving thought. ”

“ Selection is the very keel on which our mental ship is built. And in this case of memory its utility is obvious. If we remembered everything, we should on most occasions be as ill off as if we remembered nothing. ”

“ Memoria.—Memory, of all the powers of the mind, is the most delicate and frail; ”

“ Late in life we live by memory, and in our solstices or periods of stagnation; as the starved camel in the desert lives on his humps. Memory was called by the schoolmen vespertina cognitio, evening knowledge, in distinction from the command of the future which we have by the knowledge of causes, and which they called matutina cognitio, or morning knowledge. ”

“ Memory, which, though lying in the so-called fog-land of consciousness, is yet a reality, has been brought forward as decisive against the application of evolution to the origin of knowledge. Memory is a prerequisite for all psychical development. ”

“ Memory typically selects certain features from the successive perceptions and interprets them according to expectation, previous knowledge or the logic of ‘what must have happened’, and fills the gaps in perception. ”

“ We often hear of events that have long since transpired, which at the time we pass unnoticed, but somehow or other an impression is made, and sooner or later something transpires that brings to our recollection a circumstance which refreshes our memory of some important event of which we have a slight remembrance. ”

“ That is just the way with Memory; nothing that she brings to us is complete. She is a willful child; all her toys are broken. I remember tumbling into a huge dust-hole when a very small boy, but I have not the faintest recollection of ever getting out again; and if memory were all we had to trust to, I should be compelled to believe I was there still. ”