Remembrance holds a special place in our hearts, allowing us to honor the moments, people, and experiences that have shaped our lives. Whether reflecting on loved ones, significant events, or personal milestones, thoughtful words can provide comfort and inspiration. In this collection, we've gathered 46 memorable remembrance quotes that capture the essence of reflection and tribute, offering meaningful insights to contemplate and share.
1. “Silently, one by one, in the infinite meadows of heaven,Blossomed the lovely stars, the forget-me-nots of the angels.” - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
2. “To live in hearts we leave behind is not to die.” - Thomas Campbell
3. “You must learn some of my philosophy. Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure.” - Jane Austen
4. “One lives in the hope of becoming a memory.” - Antonio Porchia
5. “When the remembering was done, the forgetting could begin.” - Sara Zarr
6. “In great deeds, something abides. On great fields, something stays. Forms change and pass; bodies disappear; but spirits linger, to consecrate ground for the vision-place of souls… generations that know us not and that we know not of, heart-drawn to see where and by whom great things were suffered and done for them, shall come to this deathless field, to ponder and dream; and lo! the shadow of a mighty presence shall wrap them in its bosom, and the power of the vision pass into their souls.” - Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain
7. “Do you not know that a man is not dead while his name is still spoken?” - Terry Pratchett
8. “The time is ripe for looking back over the day, the week, the year, and trying to figure out where we have come from and where we are going to, for sifting through the things we have done and the things we have left undone for a clue to who we are and who, for better or worse, we are becoming. But again and again we avoid the long thoughts….We cling to the present out of wariness of the past. And why not, after all? We get confused. We need such escape as we can find. But there is a deeper need yet, I think, and that is the need—not all the time, surely, but from time to time—to enter that still room within us all where the past lives on as a part of the present, where the dead are alive again, where we are most alive ourselves to turnings and to where our journeys have brought us. The name of the room is Remember—the room where with patience, with charity, with quietness of heart, we remember consciously to remember the lives we have lived.” - Frederick Buechner
9. “I think it is all a matter of love; the more you love a memory the stronger and stranger it becomes” - Vladimir Nabokov
10. “The living owe it to those who no longer can speak to tell their story for them.” - Czesław Miłosz
11. “Of course he wasn't dead. He could never be dead until she herself had finished feeling and thinking. The kiss of his memory made pictures of love and light against the wall. Here was peace. She pulled in her horizon like a great fish-net. Pulled it from around the waist of the world and draped it over her shoulder. So much of life in its meshes! She called in her soul to come and see.” - Zora Neale Hurston
12. “Not marble nor the gilded monumentsOf princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme,But you shall shine more bright in these contentsThan unswept stone, besmeared with sluttish time.When wasteful war shall statues overturnAnd broils roots out the work of masonry,Nor mars his sword nor war's quick fire shall burnThe living record of your memory.'Gainst death and all-oblivious enmityShall you pace forth; your praise shall still find roomEven in the eyes of all posterityThat wear this world out to the ending doom.So, till judgement that yourself arise,You in this, and dwell in lovers eyes.” - William Shakespeare
13. “because a song can take you back instantly to a moment, or a place, or even a person. no matter what else has changed in you or the world, that one song stays the same, just like that moment.” - Sarah Dessen
14. “When I'm dead, I want to be remembered as a musician of some worth and substance.” - Freddie Mercury
15. “Our parents' generation carried the past memorialized in paint, porcelain, and wood; we cast it off. Even our national history is remembered in terms of the worst we did, not the best.” - P.D. James
16. “It has been said, 'time heals all wounds.' I do not agree. The wounds remain. In time, the mind, protecting its sanity, covers them with scar tissue and the pain lessens. But it is never gone.” - Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy
17. “There is no death in remembrance. Remember me, Sarah. Remember me, and a part of me will always be with you." - Martha Carrier to her daughter, Sarah Carrier” - Kathleen Kent
18. “You that in far-off countries of the sky can dwell secure, look back upon me here; for I am weary of this frail world's decay.” - Murasaki Shikibu
19. “Any time gone by was better.” - Jorge Manrique
20. “When we think of the past it's the beautiful things we pick out. We want to believe it was all like that.” - Margaret Atwood
21. “You are remembered for the rules you break.” - Douglas MacArthur
22. “There are two ways to live a life either forget everything or, remember nothing.” - Santosh Kalwar
23. “Do you remember those days? Back porch, sunshine, mason jars" - she paused at remembered sweetness - "we were so foolish then...thinking there was a big ol' world out there to conquer.” - Melissa Marr
24. “Music is powerful; it transforms emotions and experiences into something tangible.” - Michelle Madow
25. “Because in some other universe, you are me, I am you, and we are perfectly happy together. Or perhaps not… and just like this…” - Abhimanyu Jha
26. “When someone dies they can be any age you remember can't they ' she asked. As I tried to think of a reply she continued 'You probably think about the grown-up Tess because you were still close to her. But when I woke up I thought of her when she was three wearing a fairy skirt I'd got her in the Woolworth's and a policeman's helmet. Her wand was a wooden spoon. On the bus yesterday I imagined holding her when she was two days old. I felt the warmth of her. I remembered all her fingers clasped around my finger so tiny they didn't even meet. I remembered the shape of her head and stroking the nape of her neck till she slept. I remembered her smell. She smelled of innocence. Other times she's thirteen and so pretty that I worry for her everytime I see a man look at her. All of those Tesses is my daughter.” - Rosamund Lupton
27. “What you remember saves you.” - W. S. Merwin
28. “I have to live if I want to be remembered.” - Suzanne Young
29. “We all have an inner voice, our personal whisper from the universe. All we have to do is listen -- feel and sense it with an open heart. Sometimes it whispers of intuition or precognition. Other times, it whispers an awareness, a remembrance from another plane. Dare to listen. Dare to hear with your heart.” - C.J. Heck
30. “Should I ever again sink into illness, I'm sure I'll remember Eldric. I'll remember he cared for me. I'll remember that someone had at least taken the time to touch my face.” - Franny Billingsley
31. “It takes a huge effort to free yourself from memory” - Paulo Coelho
32. “They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old: Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning, We will remember them.” - Laurence Binyon
33. “He pressed his face into the fabric and breathed in slowly through his mouth and nose, hoping for the faintest smoke and mountain sage and salty sweet stink of Jack but there was no real scent, only the memory of it, the imagined power of Brokeback Mountain of which nothing was left but what he held in his hands.” - Annie Proulx
34. “The heart does not go backward. Only the mind.” - Elizabeth Kostova
35. “After all these years, my heart still wants you. It still misses you. it still aches for you. I can't control what my heart wants, I could just deny it of it... Love, Viv” - Eveli Acosta
36. “Forget about how you’ll be perceived after you’re gone because the world will remember you the way it wants to, and you get very little say in it. You could campaign for freedom every single day of your existence and yet only be attributed with saying something tragically stupid at precisely the wrong moment. It’s just the way it goes.” - Ellie Rose McKee
37. “Here's to us, who's like us Damn few, and they're all dead.” - Rabbie Burns
38. “I want you,” Drew said. “Just you. I used to go through every day without thinking about the future, but with you all I can see are the possibilities of the experiences we could have together.” - Michelle Madow
39. “Sixty-five years ago [written 2009], in a brief lull between storms in a remarkably stormy June, even by the standards of Channel weather, the heirs of Harold and the kinsmen of the Conqueror came to Normandy. They were supported by the remnants of their first, North American, empire, the two great nations that they had planted in the New World in the time of Good Queen Bess and James 6th and 1st: the Americans, who had rebelled in the name of the rights of Englishmen, and the Canadians, who had stood loyal in the name of the Crown. … The honours of these regiments are ancient and moving: Minden and Malplaquet, Mysore, Badajoz, Waterloo, Inkerman, Gallipoli, the Somme, Imjin. None shines more brightly than Normandy 1944. The paths of glory may lead but to the grave; yet all, even golden boys and girls, must come to dust. It is a better path to the grave than any of the others, not because glory is something to seek, but because, not once or twice in our long island story, the way of duty has been the path to glory; and duty is to be done. …Let us now praise famous men, and our fathers that begat us.” - G.M.W. Wemyss
40. “Now it's your land. But it's important, at least to me,that you remember that it's not just your land. There is a history. Now you're part of it. Good night. And off they go.” - Robert Goolrick
41. “There is in this valley a beating heart. It is always and ever there. And when I am gone, it will beat for you and when you are gone, it will beat for your children and theirs, forever. Forever. Until there is no water, no air, no green in the spring or gold in the autumn, no stars in the sky or wind from the north. And when you cannot speak, it will speak for you. When you cannot see, it will be your eyes. When you cannot remember, it will be your memory. It will never forget you. And when you cannot be faithful, it will save a place for your return. This is a gift to you. It cannot be taken away. It is yours forever. It is the narrative of this world, and the scrapbook of your own small life, and, when you are gone into ash and darkness and the grave, it will tell your story.” - Robert Goolrick
42. “The difference between the one who remembers Allah and the one who doesn’t is like the living and the dead.” - Habib Kadhim al-Saqqaf
43. “This I have known, and these have come againWith echoing happiness in heart and brain;Time standing still, surrendering to meBeauty that otherwise would cease to be.- Time Stands” - William Kean Seymour
44. “The first day of spring, the vernal equinox—the season of renewal when the earth sheds its winter cloak, flowers bloom, and the heart feels as though everything is once again imaginable. The smell of fresh-cut grass, shagging fly balls, and scraping mud from baseball cleats. A brief contemplation and tear for those gone from the field, their easy laugh and nimble sprint no longer gracing the game.” - Galen Watson
45. “If during this time, or some other time we were separated, I wouldn't forget you. I'd recall how many years have passed knowing you.” - Tomoko Yamashita
46. “If Conrad remembered the skinny, frightened girl he'd held for one brief moment on a frigid Boston street corner, he showed no signs of it when we met...Even as I tried to urge hum back against the pillows, he looked at me with wild eyes. "What happened to your leather jacket?" he asked. "Shh," I said, trying to sooth him. "There's no leather jacket." "You were wearing it the first time I saw you," he said, frowning slightly.” - Lauren Oliver
