Sooner or later we all discover that the important moments in life are not the advertised ones, not the birthdays, the graduations, the weddings, not the great goals achieved. The real milestones are less prepossessing. They come to the door of memory unannounced, stray dogs that amble in, sniff around a bit and almost never leave. Our lives are measured by those.

- Susan B. Anthony

You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something -- your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

- Steve Jobs

We see daily that our lives are terrible and little, without continuity, buyable and salable at any moment, mere blips on a screen, that this is the way we live now. Memory marketed as nostalgia; terror reduced to mere suspense, to melodrama.

- Adrienne Rich

Love is the emblem of eternity; it confounds all notion of time; effaces all memory of a beginning, all fear of an end.

- Madame de Stael

Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.

- Melody Beattie

Lost terrible silent comrades, we, who might have died, salute you.

- Richard Aldington

No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.

- Abraham Lincoln

The past with its pleasures, its rewards, its foolishness, it punishments, is there for each of us forever, and it should be.

- Lillian Hellman

Forgiveness is the release of all hope for a better past.

- Alexa Young

A lot of people mistake a short memory for a clear conscience.

- Doug Larson

The memory of oppressed people is one thing that cannot be taken away, and for such people, with such memories, revolt is always an inch below the surface.

- Howard Zinn

Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.

- Soren Kierkegaard

We cannot change our memories, but we can change their meaning and the power they have over us.

- David Seamans

Memory is the mother of all wisdom.

- Samuel Johnson

Some memories are realities, and are better than anything that can ever happen to one again.

- Willa Cather

Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.

- Albert Einstein



If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything.

- Mark Twain



There is one day that is ours. There is one day when all we Americans who are not self-made go back to the old home to eat saleratus biscuits and marvel how much nearer to the porch the old pump looks than it used to. Thanksgiving Day is the one day that is purely American.

- O. Henry



I wish I could remember where I put things. I spend half my life looking for my keys. With the other half I look for my glasses.

- Sara Paretsky



What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others. (attributed)

- Pericles



We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future.

- George Bernard Shaw



Can anybody remember when the times were not hard and money not scarce?

- Ralph Waldo Emerson



The world will little note nor long remember what we say here.

- Abraham Lincoln



It doesn't matter who my father was; it matters who I remember he was.

- Anne Sexton



The past is malleable and flexible, changing as our recollection interprets and re-explains what has happened.

- Peter Berger



Happiness is nothing more than good health and a bad memory.

- Albert Schweitzer



Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using his intelligence; he is just using his memory.

- Leonardo da Vinci



We seem to be going through a period of nostalgia, and everyone seems to think yesterday was better than today. I don't think it was, and I would advise you not to wait ten years before admitting today was great. If you're hung up on nostalgia, pretend today is yesterday and just go out and have one hell of a time.

- Art Buchwald



Son, always tell the truth. Then you'll never have to remember what you said the last time.

- Sam Rayburn



A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman's birthday but never remembers her age.

- Robert Frost



'I have done that,' says my memory. 'I cannot have done that' -- says my pride, and remains adamant. At last -- memory yields.

- Nietzsche