| Quote | Author | Source | Email Quote |
|---|
| "There's no disappointment in memory, and one's exaggerations are always on the good side." | George Eliot | Daniel Deronda |  |
| The memories which peaceful country scenes call up, are not of this world, nor of its thoughts and hopes. Their gentle influence may teach us how to weave fresh garlands for the graves of those we loved: may purify our thoughts, and bear down before it old enmity and hatred; but beneath all this, there lingers, in the least reflective mind, a vague and half-formed consciousness of having held such feelings long before, in some remote and distant time, which calls up solemn thoughts of distant times to come, and bends down pride and worldliness beneath it. | Charles Dickens | Oliver Twist | |
| Joy and grief were mingled in the cup; but there were no bitter tears: for even grief itself arose so softened, and clothed in such sweet and tender recollections, that it became a solemn pleasure, and lost all character of pain. | Charles Dickens | Oliver Twist | |
| Memory is man's greatest friend and worst enemy. | Gilbert Parker | Romany of the Snows | |
| "There is no refuge from memory and remorse in this world. The spirits of our foolish deeds haunt us, with or without repentance." | Gilbert Parker | Mrs. Falchion | |
| "Lord keep my memory green!" | Charles Dickens | The Haunted Man | |
| Recollections of the past and visions of the present come to bear me company; the meanest man to whom I have ever given alms appears, to add his mite of peace and comfort to my stock; and whenever the fire within me shall grow cold, to light my path upon this earth no more, I pray that it may be at such an hour as this, and when I love the world as well as I do now. | Charles Dickens | Master Humphrey's Clock | |
| Memory is a net; one finds it full of fish when he takes it from the brook; but a dozen miles of water have run through it without sticking. | Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. | The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table | |
| Grace Stepney's mind was like a kind of moral fly-paper, to which the buzzing items of gossip were drawn by a fatal attraction, and where they hung fast in the toils of an inexorable memory. | Edith Wharton | The House of Mirth | |
| With memory set smarting like a reopened wound, a man's past is not simply a dead history, an outworn preparation of the present: it is not a repented error shaken loose from the life: it is a still quivering part of himself, bringing shudders and bitter flavors and the tinglings of a merited shame. | George Eliot | Middlemarch | |
| At a single strain of music, the scent of a flower, or even one glimpse of a path of moonlight lying fair upon a Summer sea, the barriers crumble and fall. Through the long corridors the ghosts of the past walk unforbidden, hindered only by broken promises, dead hopes, and dream-dust. | Myrtle Reed | Old Rose and Silver | |
| "Memory, my dear Cecily, is the diary that we all carry about with us." | Oscar Wilde | The Importance of Being Earnest | |
| And from that hour his poor maimed spirit, only remembering the place where it had broken its wings, cancelled the dream through which it had since groped, and knew of nothing beyond the Marshalsea. | Charles Dickens | Little Dorrit | |
| Anne always remembered the silvery, peaceful beauty and fragrant calm of that night. It was the last night before sorrow touched her life; and no life is ever quite the same again when once that cold, sanctifying touch has been laid upon it. | Lucy Maud Montgomery | Anne of Green Gables | |
| The starred and stately nights seemed haughty dames in jewelled velvets, nursing at home in lonely pride, the memory of their absent conquering Earls, the golden helmeted suns! | Herman Melville | Moby Dick | |
| "If you will take me for your wife, Walter, I will love you dearly. If you will let me go with you, Walter, I will go to the world's end without fear. I can give up nothing for you - I have nothing to resign, and no one to forsake; but all my love and life shall be devoted to you, and with my last breath I will breathe your name to God if I have sense and memory left." | Charles Dickens | Dombey and Son | |
| My spirits were elevated by the enchanting appearance of nature; the past was blotted from my memory, the present was tranquil, and the future gilded by bright rays of hope and anticipations of joy. | Mary Shelley | Frankenstein | |
| "I remember a mass of things, but nothing distinctly; a quarrel, but nothing wherefore. O God, that men should put an enemy in their mouths to steal away their brains!" | William Shakespeare | Othello | |
| "There seems something more speakingly incomprehensible in the powers, the failures, the inequalities of memory, than in any other of our intelligences." | Jane Austen | Mansfield Park | |
| Childhood has no forebodings; but then, it is soothed by no memories of outlived sorrow. | George Eliot | The Mill on the Floss | |
