Recollection

“ 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. ”

“ It may be that the scene only comes back upon you in shifting outlines, you recall the general facts, and some few particulars are vivid, but the greater part of the details vanish again before they can assume decisive shape; they are but half nascent, or die as soon as born: a wave of recollection washes over the mind, but it quickly retires, leaving no trace behind. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It makes as vivid an impression upon them, and hangs as closely together, as an assemblage of past facts recollected by memory.—Secondly, All men are sometimes at a loss to know whether clusters of ideas that strike the fancy strongly, and succeed each other readily and immediately, be recollections, or mere reveries. And the more they agitate the matter in the mind, the more does the reverie appear like a recollection. ”

“ The thought of an original recollection in man—which, properly, is not of a mere foretime, but of eternity, but which, in all propriety, still admits of being termed a recollection—has brought us to the notion of time and eternity, and to the question of their reciprocal relation—of which the true and correct view is probably very different from that which commonly prevails. ”

“ And (2) that the fact that we have but a very cloudy and imperfect recollection is not an objection at all, for have we a clear recollection of the events of our infancy and childhood in this life? Have we a clear recollection of the events of twenty years ago, outside of a few scattered instances, of which the majority are only recalled when some associated fact is mentioned? Are not the great majority of the events of our present life completely forgotten? How many can recall the events of the youthful life? ”

“ From such a world we come, every one of us, but some seem to have a more living recollection of it than others. Perfect recollection of it no man can have, for to put on flesh is to have all one’s other memories jarred beyond power of conscious recognition. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the mean time, it may be proper here to remark that subjective memory appears to be the only kind or quality of memory which deserves that appellation; it is the only memory which is absolute. The memory of the objective mind, comparatively speaking, is more properly designated as recollection. ”

“ When once you have started upon an effort at recollection, persevere. The date or face or event that you wish to recall is bound up with a multitude of other facts of observation and of your mind life of the past. Success in recalling it depends simply upon your ability to hit upon some idea so indissolubly associated with the object of search that the recall of one automatically recalls [Pg 82] Formation of Correct Memory Habits the other. Consequently the thing to do is to hold your attention to one definite line of thought until you have exhausted its possibilities. ”

“ Therefore all pleasant things must either be present in sensation, or past in recollection, or future in hope; for one senses the present, recollects the past, and hopes for the future. Therefore our recollections are pleasant, not only when they recall things which when present were agreeable, but also some things which were not, if their consequence subsequently proves honorable or good ”

“ The recollection of adults, as is known, proceeds through different psychic material. Some recall by means of visual pictures—their memories are of a visual character; other individuals can scarcely reproduce in memory the most paltry sketch of an experience ”

“ Finally, the strengthening of our power of recollection requires a diligent practice of that power, by which practice alone we can acquire the art of developing the series of links quickly and without hesitation. ”

“ When psychologists talk of recollection as of a fold in a material, as of an impress graven deeperBut true representative memory records every moments of duration, each unique, and not to be repeated. by repetition, they forget that the immense majority of our memories bear upon events and details of our life of which the essence is to have a date, and consequently to be incapable of being repeated. The memories which we acquire voluntarily by repetition are rare and exceptional. ”

“ Part 1 We have, in the next place, to treat of Memory and Remembering, considering its nature, its cause, and the part of the soul to which this experience, as well as that of Recollecting, belongs. For the persons who possess a retentive memory are not identical with those who excel in power of recollection; indeed, as a rule, slow people have a good memory, whereas those who are quick-witted and clever are better at recollecting. ”

“ A poem is learned by heart and then not again repeated. We will suppose that after a half year it has been forgotten: no effort of recollection is able to call it back again into consciousness. ”

“ The truth is that no mind is much employed upon the present; recollection and anticipation fill up almost all our moments. ”

“ The power of recollection is the free power of imagination as a faculty of reproduction, in the manner in which we have described that faculty before.
2. The power of recollection is a power which is altogether free, stands under the control of the will and reason, and is susceptible of further culture by means of practice and rules of art.
3. The law and thread which guides this power of imagination, and by means whereof that power assigns to the reproduced conditions their determined position in time, is—Conditionedness. ”

“ The Thrill of Recollection qualities and impulses to muscular movements.
All groups bound together by a mutually related idea constitute a single "complex." Every memory you have is an illustration of such "complexes." ”

“ In ordinary life it is of the greatest importance, as far as the form which memory assumes is concerned, whether the reproductions occur with accompanying recollection or not,—i.e., whether the recurring ideas simply return or whether a knowledge of their former existence and circumstances comes back with them. ”

“ There are, perhaps, no scenes which make so strong an impression on the mind, as those with which our early recollections are associated. Other things may pass from the memory, and be lost amid the vicissitudes of the world ”

“ Memory is the primary representative faculty or power of the mind. Imagination depends upon memory for its material, as we shall see when we consider that faculty. Every mental process which involves the remembrance, recollection, or representation of a sensation, perception, mental image, thought, or idea previously experienced must depend upon memory for its material. ”

“ Recollection, the art which the practical man is now invited to learn, is in essence no more and no less than the subjection of the attention to the control of the will. ”

“ to recall, combine, and apply them to myself in such a manner, as to become one of the personages my recollection presented, and be continually in those fancied circumstances which were most agreeable to my inclinations; ”

“ Let us for a moment suppose what we call non-living substances to be capable of remembering their antecedents, and that the changes they undergo are the expressions of their recollections. Then I admit, of course, that there is not memory in any cream, we will say, that is about to be churned of the cream of the preceding week, but the common absence of such memory from each week’s cream is an element of sameness between the two. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It would seem at first rather surprising that long-forgotten experiences should effect so intensively, and that their recollections should not be subject to the decay into which all our memories merge. ”

“ They fill my mind with an endless variety of delightful recollections and associations. They relieve the understanding in its progress through a vast science, by calling up the memory of great men and of interesting events. ”

“ Seven years of peril and suffering, of wise forecast in counsels of war, and of dauntless bravery in the field, may claim from our people grateful recollections, and the expression of them in the best way that they can be commemorated by art. ”

“ Usually it is the present perception which determines the direction of our mind; but, according to the degree of tension which our mind adopts and the height at which it takes its stand, the perception develops a greater or smaller number of images.
In other words, personal recollections, exactly localized, the series of which represents the courseSo there are different planes of memory; the largest includes all our past, and is the place of dream. of our past existence, make up, all together, the last and largest enclosure of our memory. ”

“ It is a chain of recollections—an idea which carries you back to other times, to other places—which, very likely, have no connection with the present time and place. ”

“ With some people these broken recollections are so frequent and vivid as to lead to all sorts of theories to explain them, such as the possibility of former existences on earth, or the more materialistic probability that memories are transmitted from parents and ancestors from the direct ascending lines. ”

“ Impression is the process whereby the impressions of Perception are recorded or stamped upon the subconscious field of mentality, as the impress of the die upon the wax. Retention is the process whereby the subconsciousness retains or holds the impressions so received. Recollection is the process by which the mind re-collects the impressions retained in the subconsciousness, bringing them again into consciousness as objects of knowledge. Representation is the process whereby the impressions so re-collected are pictured or imaged in the mind. ”

“ but I should dread to disfigure the beautiful ideal of the memories of those illustrious persons with incongruous features, and to sully the imaginative purity of their classical works with gross and trivial recollections. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

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

“ 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. ”

“ What an interesting and varied picture do these dates present to my mind's eye, and how many remembrances are associated with them of joy and sorrow, of trial and happiness! I could willingly spend hours in recalling all in detail, and I feel as if it would do us both good, should I do so; for I find that, in the full occupation of the present, the lessons of the past are losing their power over me. Their voice cannot be heard in the busy bustle of life ”

“ If recollecting were forgetting,
Then I remember not,
And if forgetting, recollecting,
How near I had forgot,
And if to miss, were merry,
And to mourn, were gay,
How very blithe the fingers
That gathered this, today! ”

“ Nor I think has any one, who has known that experience with any constancy, failed to find some day in some old book or on some old monument, a strange or intricate image, that had floated up before him, and grow perhaps dizzy with the sudden conviction that our little memories are but a part of some great memory that renews the world and men's thoughts age after age, and that our thoughts are not, as we suppose, the deep but a little foam upon the deep. ”

“ In memory I have travelled through the shadows and the sunshine of the past, and the bare walls are associated with the visions that have come to me from the long-ago. As I love the children of memory, so I love every article in this room, for each has become a part of memory itself. ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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. ”