The Quotes canon
Sourced and curated.
Every quote has been curated by hand and carefully authenticated.
Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
Leonard2 quotes
I can't remember to forget you. — Leonard · 2000No, no, really! Memory's not perfect. It's not even that good. Ask the police. Eyewitness testimony is unreliable. The cops don't catch a killer by sitting around remembering stuff. They collect facts, they make notes and they draw conclusions. Facts, not memory. That's how you investigate. I know. It's what I used to do. Look, memory can change the shape of a room. It can change the color of a car and memories can be distorted. They're just an interpretation. They're not a record. They're irrelevant if you have the facts. — Leonard · 2000Milan Kundera2 quotes
The brain appears to possess a special area which we might call poetic memory and which records everything that charms or touches us, that makes our lives beautiful... Love begins with a metaphor. Which is to say, love begins at the point when a woman enters her first word into our poetic memory. — Milan Kundera · 1984The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting. — Milan Kundera · 1979Benjamin Franklin1 quote
Many complain of their Memory, few of their Judgment. — Benjamin Franklin · 1745Brian Friel1 quote
To remember everything is a condition of madness. — Brian Friel · 1980Christina Rossetti1 quote
Remember me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land. — Christina Rossetti · 1862Chuck Palahniuk1 quote
It's so hard to forget pain, but it's even harder to remember sweetness. We have no scar to show for happiness. We learn so little from peace. — Chuck Palahniuk · 2003Dr. Hannibal Lecter1 quote
Memory, Agent Starling, is what I have instead of a view. — Dr. Hannibal Lecter · 1991Francois de La Rochefoucauld1 quote
Everyone complains of his memory, and no one complains of his judgment. — Francois de La Rochefoucauld · 1678Gerald M. Edelman1 quote
Every act of perception, is to some degree an act of creation, and every act of memory is to some degree an act of imagination. — Gerald M. Edelman · 2000Groucho Marx1 quote
I never forget a face, but in your case I'll be glad to make an exception. — Groucho Marx · 1970Haruki Murakami1 quote
If you remember me, then I don't care if everyone else forgets. — Haruki Murakami · 2002James Joyce1 quote
His heart danced upon her movements like a cork upon a tide. He heard what her eyes said to him from beneath their cowl and knew that in some dim past, whether in life or reverie, he had heard their tale before. — James Joyce · 1915Jane Austen1 quote
Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure. — Jane Austen · 1813Jedediah Leland1 quote
I can remember absolutely everything, young man, that's my curse. That's one of the greatest curses ever inflicted on the human race, memory. — Jedediah Leland · 1941Joan Didion1 quote
Time passes. Memory fades, memory adjusts, memory conforms to what we think we remember. — Joan Didion · 2011Julian Barnes1 quote
What you end up remembering isn't always the same as what you have witnessed. — Julian Barnes · 2011Marcel Proust1 quote
Once I had recognized the taste of the crumb of madeleine soaked in her decoction of lime flowers which my aunt used to give me... Immediately the old gray house upon the street, where her room was, rose up like the scenery of a theater. — Marcel Proust · 1913Oscar Wilde1 quote
Memory, my dear Cecily, is the diary that we all carry about with us. — Oscar Wilde · 1895Saki1 quote
Women and elephants never forget an injury. — Saki · 1904Socrates1 quote
I would have you imagine, then, that there exists in the mind of man a block of wax, which is of different sizes in different men; harder, moister, and having more or less of purity in one than another, and in some of an intermediate quality... Let us say that this tablet is a gift of Memory, the mother of the Muses; and that when we wish to remember anything which we have seen, or heard, or thought in our own minds, we hold the wax to the perceptions and thoughts, and in that material receive the impression of them as from the seal of a ring; and that we remember and know what is imprinted as long as the image lasts; but when the image is effaced, or cannot be taken, then we forget and do not know. — Socrates · 369 BC