Quotes about memory
46 real sentences about memory, left by people who came before us, from c. 18th century BC to March 1, 1922, oldest first. Each one has its source and the original text.
An unnamed Babylonian poet
c. 18th century BC · Babylonia · To the king, wandering in search of a way not to die after the death of his friend Enkidu
Why, O Gish, does thou run about?
The life that thou seekest, thou wilt not find.
When the gods created mankind,
Death they imposed on mankind;
Life they kept in their power.The Epic of Gilgamesh, Old Babylonian version, spoken by the alewife · in place of the original: the English translation by Morris Jastrow and Albert T. Clay (1920)
Confucius 孔子
5th century BC · Lu, Spring and Autumn China
Standing by a river, the Master said: "What passes away is like this! It does not stop, day or night."
子在川上曰：「逝者如斯夫！不舍晝夜。」Analects, book 9 (Zihan)
Simonides Σιμωνίδης
480 BC · Keos, Greece · Handed down as the inscription on the grave of the Spartans who died at Thermopylae
Stranger, tell the Spartans that here we lie, obedient to their words.
ὦ ξεῖνʼ, ἄγγειλον Λακεδαιμονίοις ὅτι τῇδε
κείμεθα, τοῖς κείνων ῥήμασι πειθόμενοι.Greek Anthology 7.249
Pindar Πίνδαρος
446 BC · Thebes, ancient Greece
Creatures of a day! What is someone? What is no one? Man is a dream of a shadow.
ἐπάμεροι· τί δέ τις; τί δʼ οὔ τις; σκιᾶς ὄναρ
ἄνθρωπος.Pythian Ode 8
Herodotus Ἡρόδοτος
c. 430 BC · Halicarnassus, ancient Greece
This is the setting out of the inquiry of Herodotus of Halicarnassus, so that what people have done may not fade with time.
Ἡροδότου Ἁλικαρνησσέος ἱστορίης ἀπόδεξις ἥδε, ὡς μήτε τὰ γενόμενα ἐξ ἀνθρώπων τῷ χρόνῳ ἐξίτηλα γένηταιHistories, the first sentence
Sima Qian 司馬遷
c. 91 BC · Han China · A letter explaining why, after his disgrace, he did not die but lived on to write his book
Everyone must die once. A death may be heavier than Mount Tai or lighter than a goose feather. The difference lies in what it is used for.
人固有一死，或重於泰山，或輕於鴻毛，用之所趨異也。"Letter in Reply to Ren An"
Horace Quintus Horatius Flaccus
23 BC · Rome
I shall not wholly die: a great part of me will escape the goddess of death.
Non omnis moriar multaque pars mei
uitabit LibitinamOdes 3.30
Virgil P. Vergilius Maro
c. 19 BC · Rome · Aeneas to his companions, shipwrecked on a strange shore
Call back your courage, and send away sad fear. Perhaps one day it will be a joy to remember even this.
revocate animos, maestumque timorem
mittite: forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit.Aeneid, book 1, lines 202–203
Pliny the Younger Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus
events of AD 79 (letter of c. 107) · Roman Empire · A letter to the historian about the eruption of Vesuvius, which he lived through at seventeen
And night came, not like a moonless or cloudy night, but like the dark of a closed room when the lamp is put out. You could hear women wailing, infants crying, men shouting.
et nox — non qualis illunis aut nubila, sed qualis in locis clausis lumine exstincto. Audires ululatus feminarum, infantum quiritatus, clamores virorumLetters 6.20, to Tacitus
Hadrian Publius Aelius Hadrianus
AD 138 · Roman Empire · Said to have been made just before his death
Little soul, little wanderer, little charmer, guest and companion of my body, where are you off to now, to places pale, stiff and bare, never again to make your usual jokes?
animula vagula blandula, hospes comesque corporis, quae nunc abibis in loca pallidula rigida nudula nec, ut soles, dabis iocos!Historia Augusta, Life of Hadrian 25
Marcus Aurelius Μᾶρκος Αὐρήλιος
170s · Roman Empire
Near is your forgetting of all things; near, too, the forgetting of you by all.
Ἐγγὺς μὲν ἡ σὴ περὶ πάντων λήθη, ἐγγὺς δὲ ἡ πάντων περὶ σοῦ λήθη.Meditations 7.21
Perpetua Vibia Perpetua
AD 203 · Roman Carthage · Her first day in prison, parted from her nursing baby
And I was terrified, for I had never known such darkness. O bitter day!
et expaui, quia numquam experta eram tales tenebras.. o diem asperumThe Passion of Perpetua and Felicity, chapter 3 (the part that is her own prison diary)
Wang Xizhi 王羲之
March 3, 353 · Eastern Jin China
Those who come after will look at us as we now look at those before. How sad!
後之視今，亦猶今之視昔。悲夫！"Preface to the Orchid Pavilion Collection"
Wang Fanzhi 王梵志
c. 7th century · Tang China · The earthen dumplings are grave mounds, and the filling is people
Outside the city wall, the earthen dumplings; their filling is inside the city. One apiece for everyone: do not complain that they have no taste.
城外土饅頭，餡草在城裏。
一人喫一個，莫嫌沒滋味。A poem of Wang Fanzhi, as quoted and handed down by Huang Tingjian of the Song
Bede Beda
731 · Jarrow, Northumbria, England · Given as the words of one of King Edwin's men, asked whether to accept the new faith: a comparison drawn from a feast by the fire on a winter night
A single sparrow comes and flies swiftly through the hall. It comes in by one door and soon goes out by another. While it is inside, the winter storm does not touch it; but after the briefest moment of calm it slips from your sight, returning from winter into winter. So this life of man appears for a little while.
adueniens unus passerum domum citissime peruolauerit; qui cum per unum ostium ingrediens, mox per aliud exierit. Ipso quidem tempore, quo intus est, hiemis tempestate non tangitur, sed tamen paruissimo spatio serenitatis ad momentum excurso, mox de hieme in hiemem regrediens, tuis oculis elabitur. Ita haec uita hominum ad modicum apparetEcclesiastical History of the English People, book 2, chapter 13
Li Bai 李白
c. 733 · Tang China · Drinking with his cousins on a spring night in a garden of peach blossom
Heaven and earth are an inn for all things, and time is a traveller passing through a hundred ages. This floating life is like a dream: how much joy can we have?
夫天地者，萬物之逆旅也；光陰者，百代之過客也。而浮生若夢，爲歡幾何？"Preface to a Spring Night Banquet in the Peach and Plum Garden"
Du Mu 杜牧
c. 825 · Tang China
The people of Qin had no time to grieve for themselves, and those who came after grieved for them. If those who come after grieve for them and do not take warning, they will only make those after them grieve for them in turn.
秦人不暇自哀，而後人哀之；後人哀之而不鑑之，亦使後人而復哀後人也。"Rhapsody on the Epang Palace," the close
Al-Maarri أبو العلاء المعري
early 11th century · Maarra, Syria · Following the lines that say the earth is made of the bodies of those who died before
Walk, if you can, slowly through the air, not strutting over the remains of God's servants.
سر ، إن اسطعت ، في الهواء رويدا
لا اختيالا على رفات العبادThe elegy "Of no use, in my belief," Divan of al-Maarri
Su Shi 蘇軾
1061 · Song China
A life, wherever it comes to: do you know what it is like? It must be like a wild goose in flight, treading on snowy mud. By chance it leaves the marks of its claws on the mud, and when the goose flies on, who can say whether east or west?
人生到處知何似，應似飛鴻踏雪泥。
泥上偶然留指爪，鴻飛那復計東西。"Answering Ziyou's Poem on Remembering Old Days at Mianchi," in the Complete Song Poems
Su Shi 蘇軾
1082 · Song China
We are mayflies lodged between heaven and earth, a single grain of millet on the vast sea. I grieve that my life is a moment, and envy the Yangtze that never ends.
寄蜉蝣於天地，渺滄海之一粟。哀吾生之須臾，羨長江之無窮。"First Rhapsody on the Red Cliff"
Omar Khayyam عمر خیام
11th–12th century · Nishapur, Persia
Come, friend, let us not eat tomorrow's sorrow. Let us count this one moment of life as plunder. Tomorrow, when we leave this crumbling inn, we shall be level with those dead seven thousand years.
ای دوست بیا تا غم فردا نخوریم
وین یکدم عمر را غنیمت شمریم
فردا که ازین دیر فنا درگذریم
با هفت هزار سالگان سر بسریمA quatrain (rubai) handed down under Khayyam's name
Omar Khayyam عمر خیام
11th–12th century · Nishapur, Persia
My coming brought the heavens no gain, and my going will add nothing to their glory. Nor have my two ears heard from anyone what this coming and going was for.
از آمدنم نبود گردون را سود
وز رفتن من جلال و جاهش نفزود
وز هیچ کسی نیز دو گوشم نشنود
کاین آمدن و رفتنم از بهر چه بودA quatrain (rubai) handed down under Khayyam's name
Khaqani خاقانی
later 12th century · Shirvan, Caucasus · Before the ruins of Ctesiphon, once the capital of the Sasanian empire
Look, heart that would learn its lesson: open your eyes and look. Take the palace of Madain as a mirror of warning.
هان ای دل عبرت بین از دیده نظر کن هان
ایوان مدائن را آیینهٔ عبرت دان"The Palace of Madain"
Lu You 陸游
1210 · Song China · At eighty-five, the last poem he wrote before he died
I have always known that once I am dead all things are empty. My only grief is not to have seen the land made one. On the day the king's armies take back the Central Plain in the north, do not forget, at the family sacrifice, to tell your father.
死去元知萬事空，但悲不見九州同。
王師北定中原日，家祭無忘告乃翁。"To Show My Sons," in the Complete Song Poems
Kamo no Chomei 鴨長明
1212 · Kamakura Japan
The flowing river never stops, and yet the water is never the same water. The foam that floats on the pools now vanishes, now forms, and never stays for long. So it is with the people of this world and their dwellings.
行く川のながれは絶えずして、しかも本の水にあらず。よどみに浮ぶうたかたは、かつ消えかつ結びて久しくとゞまることなし。世の中にある人とすみかと、またかくの如し。Hojoki (An Account of My Hut), the opening
Saadi سعدی
1258 · Shiraz, Persia
Everyone who came built a new house, then left and handed the place on to another.
هر که آمد عمارتی نو ساخت
رفت و منزل به دیگری پرداختThe Rose Garden (Gulistan), preface
Wen Tianxiang 文天祥
1279 · Song China · Captured by the Yuan army and told to write a letter urging surrender, he answered with this poem
Since ancient times, who has lived and not died? Let me leave a loyal heart to shine in the pages of history.
人生自古誰無死，留取丹心照汗青。"Crossing the Lonely Sea," in the Complete Song Poems
Yoshida Kenko 兼好
c. 1330 · late Kamakura Japan · Adashino and Toribeyama were Kyoto's burial ground and cremation ground
If the dew on Adashino never vanished and the smoke over Toribeyama never cleared, if it were our way to live on for ever, how little there would be to move us. It is because the world is uncertain that it is precious.
あだし野の露消ゆる時なく、鳥部山の煙立ち去らでのみ住み果つるならひならば、いかにもののあはれもなからむ。世は定めなきこそいみじけれ。Tsurezuregusa (Essays in Idleness), section 7
Yi Saek 李穡
14th century · Goryeo Korea · In Pyongyang, the old capital of Goguryeo
Yesterday I passed Yeongmyeong Temple and climbed for a while to Bubyeok Pavilion. The city is empty; a single sliver of moon. The rocks are old; a thousand autumns of cloud.
昨過永明寺 暫登浮碧樓
城空月一片 石老雲千秋Mogeun jip, "Bubyeok Pavilion"
Ibn Khaldun ابن خلدون
1377 · Tunis · Cairo · Looking back on the Black Death of twenty-eight years before
In the middle of this eighth century (of the Hijra), civilization in East and West was struck by a sweeping plague that laid nations waste and carried off the people of a generation. It folded up and wiped out much of the good that civilization had made.
نزل بالعمران شرقا وغربا في منتصف هذه المائة الثامنة من الطاعون الجارف الذي تحيف الأمم وذهب بأهل الجيل وطوى كثيرا من محاسن العمران ومحاهاThe Muqaddimah, introduction
Ibn Khaldun ابن خلدون
1377 · Tunis · Cairo
It was as if the voice of existence had called on the world to sink into obscurity and shrink, and the world had hurried to answer.
وكأنما نادى لسان الكون في العالم بالخمول والانقباض فبادر بالإجابةThe Muqaddimah, introduction
Gil Jae 吉再
early 15th century (recorded in a songbook of 1728) · Goryeo and Joseon Korea · Visiting Gaeseong, the old capital of fallen Goryeo
I ride back alone, on one horse, into the capital of five hundred years. The hills and streams are as they were; the great men are nowhere to be found. Ah, those days of peace: were they a dream?
五百年 都邑地를 匹馬로 도라드니
山川은 依舊ᄒᆞ되 人傑은 간 듸 업다
어즈버 太平烟月이 ᄭᅮᆷ이런가 ᄒᆞ노라"Hoegoga," in Cheonggu yeongeon (1728)
William Wordsworth
1804 · Lake District, England · Remembering the daffodils he had seen by the lake with his sister Dorothy two years before
For oft when on my couch I lie In vacant or in pensive mood, They flash upon that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude, And then my heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the Daffodils.
"Daffodils," in Poems, in Two Volumes (1807)
Jane Austen
1813 · England
Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure.
Pride and Prejudice, chapter 58, spoken by Elizabeth
Walt Whitman
1856 · United States
It avails not, time nor place—distance avails not, I am with you, you men and women of a generation, or ever so many generations hence, Just as you feel when you look on the river and sky, so I felt,
"Crossing Brooklyn Ferry," in Leaves of Grass
Abraham Lincoln
November 19, 1863 · Illinois, USA · At the dedication of a cemetery for the soldiers who died in the war
world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.
The Gettysburg Address
George Eliot
1872 · Warwickshire, England · London
for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.
Middlemarch, the last sentence
Toru Dutt
1870s · Kolkata, India · After losing the brother and sister who had played with her under that tree as children
But not because of its magnificence Dear is the Casuarina to my soul: Beneath it we have played; though years may roll, O sweet companions, loved with love intense, For your sakes, shall the tree be ever dear! Blent with your images, it shall arise In memory, till the hot tears blind mine eyes!
"Our Casuarina Tree," in Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan (1882)
Uchimura Kanzo 内村鑑三
1894 · Meiji–Showa Japan
What, then, is the greatest legacy? As I see it, there is a legacy a person can leave to those who come after, one that anyone can leave, that brings only good and no harm. And what is it? I believe it is a brave and noble life.
それならば最大遺物とはなんであるか。私が考えてみますに人間が後世に遺すことのできる、ソウしてこれは誰にも遺すことのできるところの遺物で、利益ばかりあって害のない遺物がある。それは何であるかならば勇ましい高尚なる生涯であると思います。The lecture "The Greatest Legacy" (Kosei e no saidai ibutsu)
Mark Twain
1894 · Missouri, USA · Connecticut
Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.
Pudd'nhead Wilson, a chapter epigraph from "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
Oscar Wilde
1895 · Ireland · Britain
Memory, my dear Cecily, is the diary that we all carry about with us.
The Importance of Being Earnest, Act 2, spoken by Miss Prism
Zitkala-Sa Zitkála-Šá
1900 · Yankton Dakota · The day her hair was cut at the boarding school she entered at eight. Among her people, short hair was worn by mourners and by cowards
I cried aloud, shaking my head all the while until I felt the cold blades of the scissors against my neck, and heard them gnaw off one of my thick braids. Then I lost my spirit.
"The School Days of an Indian Girl," in American Indian Stories
Charles Eastman Charles A. Eastman (Ohiyesa)
1902 · Great Plains, North America · United States
WHAT boy would not be an Indian for a while when he thinks of the freest life in the world? This life was mine.
Indian Boyhood, the opening
Marcel Proust
1913 · Paris, France · The moment he put a piece of cake soaked in tea into his mouth
And all at once the memory appeared to me. That taste was the taste of the little piece of madeleine …
Et tout d'un coup le souvenir m'est apparu. Ce goût c'était celui du petit morceau de madeleine …
In Search of Lost Time, vol. 1, Swann's Way
Chiri Yukie 知里幸恵
March 1, 1922 · Ainu
Long ago, this wide Hokkaido was the land of freedom of our ancestors.
その昔この広い北海道は，私たちの先祖の自由の天地でありました．Ainu shin'yoshu (Collection of Ainu Songs of the Gods), preface
Chiri Yukie 知里幸恵
March 1, 1922 · Ainu
The many words our dear ancestors used to understand one another, day in and day out as they rose and lay down, the many beautiful sayings worn smooth with use and handed down: will all of these, too, vanish for nothing, along with the weak who are dying out? Oh, that would be too painful, too much to lose.
愛する私たちの先祖が起伏す日頃互いに意を通ずる為に用いた多くの言語，言い古し，残し伝えた多くの美しい言葉，それらのものもみんな果敢なく，亡びゆく弱きものと共に消失せてしまうのでしょうか．おおそれはあまりにいたましい名残惜しい事で御座います．Ainu shin'yoshu (Collection of Ainu Songs of the Gods), preface
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