66 Quotes About Cherished Memories

In the tapestry of our lives, cherished memories serve as vibrant threads that add color, depth, and warmth. They are the gentle reminders of moments that have left an indelible mark on our hearts, offering solace during challenging times and joy during reflective ones. Whether it's the sound of a loved one's laughter, the serene beauty of a sunset, or the simple joys of childhood, these memories capture the essence of life's most meaningful experiences. Dive into our curated collection of quotes that celebrate these treasured recollections, inviting you to reflect on your own journey and the memories that have shaped it.

1. “I take you and pile high the memories. Death will break her claws on some I keep.” - Carl Sandburg

2. “Stephen kissed me in the spring,Robin in the fall,But Colin only looked at meAnd never kissed at all.Stephen’s kiss was lost in jest,Robin’s lost in play,But the kiss in Colin’s eyesHaunts me night and day.” - Sara Teasdale

3. “People leave strange little memories of themselves behind when they die.” - Haruki Murakami

4. “We’re so caught up in our everyday lives that events of the past, like ancient stars that have burned out, are no longer in orbit around our minds. There are just too many things we have to think about every day, too many new things we have to learn. New styles, new information, new technology, new terminology … But still, no matter how much time passes, no matter what takes place in the interim, there are some things we can never assign to oblivion, memories we can never rub away. They remain with us forever, like a touchstone.” - Haruki Murakami

5. “No matter how much suffering you went through, you never wanted to let go of those memories.” - Haruki Murakami

6. “memories were tricky things…they weren’t stable. they changed with perception over time. …they shifted, and [she] understood how the passage of time affected them. the hard working striver might recall his childhood as one filled with misery and hardship marred by the cat calls and mae calling of playground bullies, but later, have a much more forgiving understanding of past injustices. the handmade clothes he had been forced to wear, became a testament to his mother’s love. each patch and stitch a sign of her diligence, instead of a brand of poverty. he would remember father staying up late to help him with his homework – the old old man’s patience and dedication, instead of the sharpness of his temper when he returned home – late- from the factory. it went the other way as well.[she] had scanned thousands of memories of spurned women, whose handsome lovers turned ugly and rude. roman noses, perhaps too pointed. eyes growing small and mean. while the oridnary looking boys who had become their husbands, grew in attractiveness as the years passed, so that when asked if it was love at first site, the women cheerfully answered yes. memories were moving pictures in which meaning was constantly in flux. they were stories people told themselves.” - Melissa de la Cruz

7. “My father spoke with his hands. He was deaf. His voice was in his hands. And his hands contained his memories.” - Myron Uhlberg

8. “Do you remember how you felt at seventeen? I do and I don't (...) Imagine you came from outer space and someone showed you a butterfly and a caterpillar. Would you ever put the two of them together? That's me and my memories.” - Douglas Coupland

9. “It scares me how hard it is to remember life before you. I can't even make the comparisons anymore, because my memories of that time have all the depth of a photograph. It seems foolish to play games of better and worse. It's simply a matter of is and is no longer.” - David Levithan

10. “The Old Days, the Lost Days -- in the half-closed eyes of memory (and in fact) they never marched across a calendar; they huddled round a burning log, leaned on a certain table, or listened to those certain songs.” - Beryl Markham

11. “Nebylo tu nic pořádného k snědku, bylo to jenom velké akvárium, jehož stěny tvořily místo skleněných tabulí ze dvou stran břehy, dole písek, a nahoře nebe. A kolem dokola kvetly pomněnky a říkali vzpomínej.” - Ota Pavel

12. “and I'm thinking as our bodies meet that I'll remember this forever, and i just hope it's for all the right reasons.” - Steven Herrick

13. “Saffy could tell by the feel of the darkness that Caddy was awake. She said, "Caddy, how far back can you remember?""Oh," said Caddy, "ages. I can remember when I could only lie flat. On my back. I can remember how pleased I was when I learned to roll over.” - Hilary McKay

14. “If-Then" is a structured logic of humans' thought,who have memories and imagination in their mind. If both don't exist, Then this quote has never even been written.” - Toba Beta

15. “Strange, what brings these past things so vividly back to us, sometimes!” - Harriet Beecher Stowe

16. “You know how sometimes you remember a place you once loved, a movie you’ve enjoyed, only to be disappointed when you return to that place or see that movie for a second time? Well, it wasn’t disappointing. She sounds exactly as I remember her—and there is still something so warm and caring about her that it is difficult to hate her for how she abandoned us.” - Christina Westover

17. “Attempting to Soar"A boy from Brooklyn used to cruise on summer nights.As soon as he’d hit sixty he’d hold his hand out the window,cupping it around the wind. He’d been assuredthis is exactly how a woman’s breast feels when you putyour hand around it and apply a little pressure. Now he knew,and he loved it. Night after night, again and again, untilthe weather grew cold and he had to roll the window up.For many years afterwards he was perpetually attemptingto soar. One winter’s night, holding his wife’s breastin his hand, he closed his eyes and wanted to weep.He loved her, but it was the wind he imagined now.As he grew older, he loved the word etcetera and refusedto abbreviate it. He loved sweet white butter. He oftenpretended to be playing the organ. On one of his last mornings,he noticed the shape of his face molded in the pillow.He shook it out, but the next morning it reappeared.” - Mary Ruefle

18. “Misery is a scar on the soul, that if it begins in childhood, it lasts the whole lifetime. I understand that no two scars are alike, but I also ask myself; even if these scars are not alike, aren’t these things engraved on our souls signed by which we know each other?Aren’t we also alike?” - Bahaa Taher

19. “Their memory was something tangible and heavy, and I would carry it with me.” - Ransom Riggs

20. “People always talk about how hard it can be to remember things - where they left their keys, or the name of an acquaintance - but no one ever talks about how much effort we put into forgetting. I am exhausted from the effort to forget... There are things that have to be forgotten if you want to go on living.” - Stephen Carpenter

21. “...we should be remembered for the things we do. The things we do are the most important things of all. They are more important than what we say or what we look like. The things we do outlast our mortality. The things we do are like monuments that people build to honour heroes after they've died. They're like the pyramids that the Egyptians built to honour the Pharaohs. Only instead of being made out of stone, they're made out of the memories people have of you. That's why your deeds are like your monuments. Built with memories instead of with stone.” - R.J. Palacio

22. “I remember when your name was just another name that rolled without thought off my tongue.Now, I can’t look at your name without an abundance of sentiment attached to each letter.Your name, which I played with so carelessly, so easily, has somehow become sacred to my lips.A name I won’t throw around lightheartedly or repeat without deep thought.And if ever I speak of you, I use the English language to describe who you were to me. You are nameless, because those letters grouped together in that familiar form….. carries too much meaning for my capricious heart.” - Jamie Weise

23. “As individuals die every moment, how insensitive and fabricated a love it is to set aside a day from selfish routine in prideful, patriotic commemoration of tragedy. Just as God is provoked by those who tithe simply because they feel that they must tithe, I am provoked by those who commemorate simply because they feel that they must commemorate.” - Criss Jami

24. “When you are joyful, when you say yes to life and have fun and project positivity all around you, you become a sun in the center of every constellation, and people want to be near you.” - Shannon L. Alder

25. “Now he knew that any memories he might cherish during the last years of his life would be only fictions from a biography he'd never lived.” - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

26. “From now on when people asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I planned to say, Amnesiac.” - Sue Monk Kidd

27. “Her body was a prison, her mind was a prison. Her memories were a prison. The people she loved. She couldn't get away from the hurt of them. She could leave Eric, walk out of her apartment, walk forever if she liked, but she couldn't escape what really hurt. Tonight even the sky felt like a prison.” - Ann Brashares

28. “Rich dreams now which he was loathe to wake from. Things no longer known in the world. The cold drove him forth to mend the fire. Memory of her crossing the lawn toward the house in the early morning in a thin rose gown that clung to her breasts. He thought each memory recalled must do some violence to its origins. As in a party game. Say the words and pass it on. So be sparing. What you alter in the remembering has yet a reality, known or not.” - Cormac McCarthy

29. “My memories are like a shuffled deck of cards, each one coming up at random.” - Brian James

30. “Some memories are presents that I'm unable to unwrap over and over.” - Brian James

31. “What you remember saves you.” - W. S. Merwin

32. “My prolonged study of these photographs led me to appreciate the importance of preserving certain moments for prosperity, and as time moved forwards I also came to see what a powerful influence these framed scenes exerted over us as we went about our daily lives.To watch my uncle pose my brother a maths problem, and at the same time to see him in a picture taken thirty-two years earlier; to watch my father scanning the newspaper and trying, with a half-smile, to catch the tail of a joke rippling across the crowded room, and at that very same moment to see a picture of him to me that my grandmother had framed and frozen these memories so that we could weave them into the present.When, in the tones ordinarily preserved for discussing the founding of a nation, my grandmother spoke of my grandfather who had died so young, and pointed at the frames on the tables and the walls, it seemed that she, like me, was pulled in two direction , wanting to get on with life but also longing to capture the moment of perfection, savouring the ordinary life but still honouring the ideal. But even as I pondered these dilemmas-if you plucked a special moment from life and framed it, were you defying death, decay and the passage of time, or were you submitting to them? - I grew very bored with them.” - Orhan Pamuk

33. “In the dark, dank world of the Tunnels, I would call upon this memory. And there would be a flicker of candlelight. If only for a moment. I closed my eyes, as if my eyelids were the levers of a printing press, etching the fibers into my mind. Memories were outside Cole’s reach. As long as I held them, memories were mine and mine alone.” - Brodi Ashton

34. “Ah God! to see the branches stir Across the moon at Grantchester! To smell the thrilling-sweet and rotten Unforgettable, unforgotten River-smell, and hear the breeze Sobbing in the little trees. Say, do the elm-clumps greatly stand Still guardians of that holy land? The chestnuts shade, in reverend dream, The yet unacademic streamIs dawn a secret shy and cold Anadyomene, silver-gold? And sunset still a golden sea From Haslingfield to Madingley? And after, ere the night is born,Do hares come out about the corn? Oh, is the water sweet and cool, Gentle and brown, above the pool? And laughs the immortal river still Under the mill, under the mill?Say, is there Beauty yet to find? And Certainty? and Quiet kind? Deep meadows yet, for to forget The lies, and truths, and pain?… oh! yet Stands the Church clock at ten to three? And is there honey still for tea?” - Rupert Brooke

35. “But it was smell that carried memory.” - Ann Brashares

36. “Who are we without our memories?” - Marta Acosta

37. “I want to believe that memories, even sad and painful ones, should not be forgotten forever.” - Momiji Sohma

38. “And here in this room, I re-experience the memories again and again it is how wisdom comes and how we shape our future.” - Lois Lowry

39. “...everyone wants to be excited by something magical and wondrous - to be reminded of how they once saw the world ...” - John Geddes

40. “Souls and memories can do strange things during trance.” - Bram Stoker

41. “Gritting my teeth as if it requires actual physical strength, I push the memory of him dying in my arms down, deep down. It almost seems to fight me, to want to surge into the forefront of my mind, and I sigh. Long ago I came to the realization that painful memories are persistent. The agony of them stays with you much longer, sharper, and clearer than sweet memories, that soften and assume a hazy, rosy glow in your mind, almost as if they have been airbrushed. Remembrance of pain is different; there is no muting of colors, no blurring of edges. No, its colors remain stark and bold, a palette of vibrant primary reds, blues, and yellows; its edges stay defined and razor sharp. Years later it can still cut you as deeply, make you bleed as profusely, as the day it was formed. FROM AN UNTITLED WORK IN PROGRRESS” - Lily Velden

42. “Good memories invite heaven.” - Toba Beta

43. “When we let the expectations of others or own unreasonable self-expectations rule, we silence the power of our Legacies.” - Joy DeKok

44. “Those static images have the uncanny ability to jar the memory and bring places and people back to life. They bridge the present with the past and validate as real what the passage of time has turned into hazy recollections. Were it not for them, my experiences would have remained as just imperfect memories of perfect moments.” - Isabel Lopez

45. “Yes. I remember.”His voice had deepened. I remember. Mina did, too, every conversation they’d had over breakfast, and it made her heart ache. Such a strange thing... She suddenly couldn’t laugh anymore.” - Meljean Brook

46. “A deceitful man will go as far as to trample all over a woman’s reputation and spirit, in order to prove to his ex-love that he was faithful. The irony, is he is still in love with his ex and the new woman in his life doesn’t even realize it.” - Shannon L. Alder

47. “Well, there's a piece of Maria in every song that I sing. And the price of a memory is the memory of the sorrow it brings. And there is always one last light to turn out and one last bell to ring. And the last one out of the circus has to lock up everything.” - Counting Crows

48. “What matters is at the end of life, when you're about to pass into oblivion, that you've at least scratched 'Kilroy was here,' on the last wall of the universe.” - William Faulkner

49. “I couldn't tell what colour her eyes were. They were wet and dark and shining, like pools of deep, still water. For a second I thought I could see pictures in them, like I was looking right inside her to where her memories were. She smiled, and I wondered if she knew what I'd seen or if she could see the pictures I kept hidden inside myself.” - Glenda Millard

50. “Perhaps the rest of the world was gone. It was the most plausible answer. Heaven knows she couldn’t see or think of anyone else. That must be the answer, they were the only two people left, as the Earth spun into a timeless abyss. Claire once read time doesn’t pass at normal speeds within a black hole. If one were to travel into a black hole for only moments and return again, centuries would have passed. That explained the sensation she felt, once again peering into his dark gaze. She wouldn’t look away; she’d trained herself better than that. Then again, she reasoned, it wasn’t an option. She couldn’t divert her gaze if she wanted. The hold upon her stare was stronger than any ropes or chains made by man. Claire knew from experience, submitting to the hold was her best chance at survival. Fighting was a futile waste of energy.” - Aleatha Romig

51. “É possível avançar por ruas durante toda a vida, perder as forças nas pernas, cair de joelhos e morrer, transformar-se lentamente, com a chuva, com os anos, no empedrado da calçada, diluir-se entre as pedras, como pó, como água, desaparecer.” - José Luis Peixoto

52. “Esta es una buena imagen suya que nos quedó muy grabada en la memoria: la imagen de alguien que nunca le tuvo miedo a la vida, y es por eso que le sacó tanto provecho; es por eso, que a mis ojos, su vida se coronó con tantos éxitos.” - Claudio Bogantes Zamora

53. “When he opens the door, I step in and an army of memories comes at me from all sides.” - Lisa Schroeder

54. “Sometimes, at the least opportune times, the past is an insomniac, alive and well.” - Courtney Cole

55. “Discussing it later, many of us felt we suffered a mental dislocation at that moment, which only grew worse through the course of the remaining deaths. The prevailing symptom of this state was an inability to recall any sound. Truck doors slammed silently; Lux's mouth screamed silently; and the street, the creaking tree limbs, the streetlight clicking different colors, the electric buzz of the pedestrian crossing box - all these usually clamorous voices hushes, or had begun shrieking at a pitch too high for us to hear, though they sent chills up our spines. Sound returned only once Lux had gone. Televisions erupted with canned laughter. Fathers splashed, soaking aching backs.” - Jeffrey Eugenides

56. “...we live in the same city but don't see the same things - you see buildings and I see memories...” - John Geddes

57. “Ghosts are not what I remember of my childhood; but somehow they infuse memories of myself as a child, the little girl in a storybook, with ghosts hovering around her.” - Yolanda A. Reid

58. “Some part of me remembers what snow is, but this is the first time my new mind has seen it. It softens the crumbled sidewalks and turns rusty rooftops white. It’s beautiful. It crunches under my feet as I move toward the house, longing to understand.” - Isaac Marion

59. “When my husband died, people kept telling me not to cry. People kept trying to help me to forget. But I didn't want to forget... So I realize, that if it's hard for me, how much harder it must be for you.” - Katherine Paterson

60. “I remember his eyes. They are just like mine. Every time I look in the mirror I see him. I try not to look at my self too much.” - Ida Løkås

61. “I was increasingly both horrified and sceptical about these memories - I had no recall of these things at all, though I couldn't imagine why I'd want to make it all up either. It felt as though it had all happened to somebody else, I was not there - it wasn't me - when those people did nasty things.But then, of course, it didn't feel like me, that's the whole point of dissociation - to create distance between the victim and her experience of the abuse. The alters were created for just that purpose: so that I'd not be aware that it happened to me, but rather to "others". The trouble is, in reality it was my body that took the abuse. It was only my mind that was divided, and sooner or later the amnesic barriers were bound to come down.And that's exactly what had begun to happen as I heard their stories. They triggered a vague and growing sense in me that this really is my story.” - Carolyn Bramhall

62. “Many deeply hidden memories have come flooding back. The important message here though is that it is possible to heal and survive. Everyone has survived their own kind of emotional or mental trauma. We all have our inner fears and misreplaced feelings of guilt.” - Lynette Gould

63. “Coming to terms with incest is not easy. Learning to be a survivor, not a victim, gives new meaning to life” - Lynette Gould

64. “Moments fly, memories remain; and then memories fly, only memoirs remain and finally memoirs disappear, nothing remains!” - Mehmet Murat ildan

65. “I answer the heroic question, 'Death, where is thy sting?' with 'It is in my heart and mind and memories.” - Maya Angelou

66. “Have you really not noticed, then, that here of all places, in this private, personal solitude that surrounds me, I have turned to you? All the memories of my youth speak to me as I walk, just as the sea shells crunch under my feet on the beach. The crash of every wave awakens far-distant reverberations within me... I hear the rumble of bygone days, and in my mind the whole endless series of old passions surges forward like the billows. I remember my spasms, my sorrows, gusts of desire that whistled like wind in the rigging, and vast vague longings that swirled in the dark like a flock of wild gulls in a stormcloud... On whom should I lean, if not on you? My weary mind turns for refreshment to the thought of you as a dusty traveler might sink onto a soft and grassy bank...” - Gustave Flaubert