99 Memorable Quotes

In a world brimming with words, some possess the rare power to resonate deeply and leave a lasting impact. Whether it's a line from a timeless classic, a profound thought from a revered philosopher, or a snippet of wisdom from a modern thinker, certain quotes transcend the ordinary. They linger in our minds, offering inspiration, comfort, and insight. In this carefully curated collection, we present the top 99 memorable quotes that have touched hearts and sparked minds across generations. Dive in and let these words of wisdom enrich your journey.

1. “The days aren't discarded or collected, they are beesthat burned with sweetness or maddenedthe sting: the struggle continues,the journeys go and come between honey and pain.No, the net of years doesn't unweave: there is no net.They don't fall drop by drop from a river: there is no river.Sleep doesn't divide life into halves,or action, or silence, or honor:life is like a stone, a single motion,a lonesome bonfire reflected on the leaves,an arrow, only one, slow or swift, a metalthat climbs or descends burning in your bones.” - Pablo Neruda

2. “Where you come from is gone, where you thought you were going to never was there, and where you are is no good unless you can get away from it” - Flannery O' Connor

3. “Sometimes things become possible if we want them bad enough.” - T.S. Eliot

4. “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.” - L.P. Hartley

5. “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

6. “The voices may propel you to warble along, or to dance, they may inspire you to seduction or insurrection or inspection or merely to watching a little less television. The voices of Barrett Rude Jr. and the Subtle Distinctions lead nowhere, though, if not back to your own neighborhood. To the street where you live. To things you left behind.And that's what you need, what you needed all along.” - Jonathan Lethem

7. “Remember me when I am deadand simplify me when I'm dead.” - Keith Douglas

8. “You swallow hard when you discover that the old coffee shop is now a chain pharmacy, that the place where you first kissed so-and-so is now a discount electronics retailer, that where you bought this very jacket is now rubble behind a blue plywood fence and a future office building. Damage has been done to your city. You say, ''It happened overnight.'' But of course it didn't. Your pizza parlor, his shoeshine stand, her hat store: when they were here, we neglected them. For all you know, the place closed down moments after the last time you walked out the door. (Ten months ago? Six years? Fifteen? You can't remember, can you?) And there have been five stores in that spot before the travel agency. Five different neighborhoods coming and going between then and now, other people's other cities. Or 15, 25, 100 neighborhoods. Thousands of people pass that storefront every day, each one haunting the streets of his or her own New York, not one of them seeing the same thing.” - COLSON WHITEHEAD

9. “And, even yet, I dare not let it languish,Dare not indulge in memory’s rapturous pain;Once drinking deep of that divinest anguish,How could I seek the empty world again?” - Emily Brontë

10. “Most things are forgotten over time. Even the war itself, the life-and-death struggle people went through is now like something from the distant past. We’re so caught up in our everyday lives that events of the past are no longer in orbit around our minds. There are just too many things we have to think about everyday, too many new things we have to learn. 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

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

12. “What i like about photographs is that they capture a moment that’s gone forever, impossible to reproduce.” - Karl Lagerfeld

13. “When it comes to memories, the good and the bad never balance.” - Jodi Picoult

14. “Listen to the people who love you. Believe that they are worth living for even when you don't believe it. Seek out the memories depression takes away and project them into the future. Be brave; be strong; take your pills. Exercise because it's good for you even if every step weighs a thousand pounds. Eat when food itself disgusts you. Reason with yourself when you have lost your reason.” - Andrew Solomon

15. “Think of two people, living together day after day, year after year, in this small space, standing elbow to elbow cooking at the same small stove, squeezing past each other on the narrow stairs, shaving in front of the same small bathroom mirror, constantly jogging, jostling, bumping against each other’s bodies by mistake or on purpose, sensually, aggressively, awkwardly, impatiently, in rage or in love – think what deep though invisible tracks they must leave, everywhere, behind them!” - Christopher Isherwood

16. “Forgetting isn't enough. You can paddle away from the memories and think they are gone. But they will keep floating back, again and again and agian. They circle you, like sharks. Until, unless, something, someone? Can do more than just cover the wound. ” - Sara Zarr

17. “The worst memories stick with us, while the nice ones always seem to slip through our fingers.” - Rachel Vincent

18. “Dates are convenient hooks on which we can hang our memories of events. But history is all about people - people like you and me who did things to change the world.” - Joan Lowery Nixon

19. “People have often told me that one of their strongest childhood memories is the scent of their grandmother's house. I never knew my grandmothers, but I could always count of the Bookmobile.” - Adriana Trigiani

20. “[Think] of an experience from your childhood. Something you remember clearly, something you can see, feel, maybe even smell, as if you were really there. After all you really were there at the time, weren't you? How else could you remember it? But here is the bombshell: you weren't there. Not a single atom that is in your body today was there when that event took place. Every bit of you has been replaced many times over (which is why you eat, of course). You are not even the same shape as you were then. The point is that you are like a cloud: something that persists over long periods, while simultaneously being in flux. Matter flows from place to place and momentarily comes together to be you. Whatever you are, therefore, you are not the stuff of which you are made. If that does not make the hair stand up on the back of your neck, read it again until it does, because it is important.” - Steve Grand

21. “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

22. “So, we skipped Annabel, and discussed condoms. I said I liked the orange ones, and we ended our talk in laughter.” - Steven Herrick

23. “I don't know where to start," one [writing student] will wail. Start with your childhood, I tell them. Plug your nose and jump in, and write down all your memories as truthfully as you can. Flannery O' Connor said that anyone who has survived childhood has enough material to write for the rest of his or her life. Maybe your childhood was grim and horrible, but grim and horrible is Okay if it is well done. Don't worry about doing it well yet, though. Just get it down.” - Anne Lamott

24. “Isn't it funny how the memories you cherish before a breakup can become your worst enemies afterwards? The thoughts you loved to think about, the memories you wanted to hold up to the light and view from every angle--it suddenly seems a lot safer to lock them in a box, far from the light of day and throw away the key. It's not an act of bitterness. It's an act if self-preservation. It's not always a bad idea to stay behind the window and look out at life instead, is it?” - Allyson Braithwaite Condie

25. “But Lunch Isn't That Bad, ReallyOnce I get used tohaving to eat with two peopleinstead of one.Two people who have known each otherfor such a long timethat they practically speak in code.Two people who are always saying,"Remember the time when this happened?"and "Remember the time when that happened?"(Which, of course,I never do,because I wasn't there.)Well, okay,it is that bad.It sucks, even.” - Sonya Sones

26. “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

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

28. “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

29. “...and yet, though desirous to be gone, she could not quit the mansion-house, or look an adieu to the cottage, with its black, dripping and comfortless veranda, or even notice through the misty glasses the last humble tenements of the village, without a saddened heart. Scenes had passed in Uppercross which made it precious. It stood the record of many sensations of pain, once severe, but now softened; and of some instances of relenting feeling, some breathings of friendship and reconciliation, which could never be looked for again, and which could never cease to be dear. She left it all behind her, all but the recollection that such things had been.” - Jane Austen

30. “There's no consciousness without senses and memories.” - Toba Beta

31. “You don’t deserve my image in your head. You don’t deserve my memories in your chest.” - Jamie Weise

32. “And the moral of the story is that you don’t remember what happened. What you remember becomes what happened.” - John Green

33. “I've been wondering," Isabelle commented reflectively over dessert, "if it is foolish to make new memories when you know you are going to lose them.” - Erica Bauermeister

34. “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

35. “A good fragrance is really a powerful cocktail of memories and emotion.” - Jeffrey Stepakoff

36. “Now that I have opened that bottle of memories they're pouring out like wine, crimson and bittersweet.” - Ellen Hopkins

37. “This was me before I knew about anything hard, when my whole life was packed lunches and art projects and spelling quizzes.” - Nina LaCour

38. “It's regrets that make painful memories. When I was crazy I did everything just right.” - Mark Vonnegut

39. “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

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

41. “These are the quicksilver moments of my childhood I cannot remember entirely. Irresistible and emblematic, I can recall them only in fragments and shivers of the heart.” - Pat Conroy

42. “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

43. “When nothing else subsists from the past, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered...the smell and taste of things remain poised a long time, like souls...bearing resiliently, on tiny and almost impalpable drops of their essence, the immense edifice of memory” - Marcel Proust

44. “How memories lie to us. How time coats the ordinary with gold. How it breaks the heart to go back and attempt to re-live them. How crushed we are when we discover that the gold was merely gold-plating thinly coated over lead, chalk and peeling paint.” - Henry Rollins

45. “She knew enough to recognize that memories were crowding in, and there was nothing he could do. They wouldn’t let him speak. She would never know what scenes were driving that turmoil.” - Ian McEwan

46. “A territory is only possessed for a moment in time.” - Barbara Kingsolver

47. “Friends are the most important part of your life. Treasure the tears, treasure the laughter, but most importantly, treasure the memories.” - Dave Brenner

48. “What a host of little incidents, all deep-buried in the past -- problems that had once been urgent, arguments that had once been keen, anecdotes that were funny only because one remembered the fun. Did any emotion really matter when the last trace of it had vanished from human memory; and if that were so, what a crowd of emotions clung to him as to their last home before annihilation? He must be kind to them, must treasure them in his mind before their long sleep.” - James Hilton

49. “Love is hard to find, hard to keep, and hard to forget.” - Alysha Speer

50. “were the last words that I wrote for you enough to tell youthat in my death the light that shone through my painful darknesswas a blinding vision of your eternal smile?cold scalpel's steel whispers tear at my very coreas I cling to my memories of you...” - xavier

51. “The streets looked small, of course. The streets that we have only seen as children always do I believe when we go back to them” - Charles Dickens

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

53. “The little house is not too smallTo shelter friends who come to call.Though low the roof and small its spaceIt holds the Lord's abounding grace,And every simple room may beEndowed with happy memory.The little house, severly plain,A wealth of beauty may contain.Within it those who dwell may findHigh faith which makes for peace of mind,And that sweet understanding whichCan make the poorest cottage rich.The little house can hold all thingsFrom which the soul's contentment springs.'Tis not too small for love to grow,For all the joys that mortals know,For mirth and song and that delightWhich make the humblest dwelling bright.” - Edgar A. Guest

54. “How can days and happenings and moments so good become so quickly ugly, and for no reason, for no real reason? Just—change. With nothing causing it.” - Philip K. Dick

55. “The whole fairground with all its memories would soon be smashed into the dust.” - Caroline Green

56. “Sometimes I would see them not as mementos of the blissful hours but as the tangible precious debris of the storm raging in my soul.” - Orhan Pamuk

57. “...every time I look at you autumn leaves come in between - does it matter they're the color of your hair - or they still fall in my memory?...” - John Geddes

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

59. “The man went to the controls, looking up at me, flaring his nostrils to my actions. His voice was like a voice under water. “We’ll see what becomes of your rebellious nature when you lose your memories, Rei Lin.” He punched a few buttons and turned the knob on the wall to the right.” - Millicent Ashby

60. “...spiritual or emotional pain doesn't become a memory so much as a bruise ...” - John Geddes

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

62. “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

63. “We walked into the arena together with him reaching out his arm and wrapping it around my waist. He pulled me into him, smelling the aroma around him. The scent was familiar like I was with him before. Although I was positive that I’d never seen this man, something still ached at me. Was it a longing of a piece of my past starting to take effect?” - Millicent Ashby

64. “He got up slowly, not bothering to curse himself for forgetting the stop where he had to disembark. He was not used to leaving things behind; he wondered how the bus stop escaped.” - Faraaz Kazi

65. “She turned around to look at me with her enchanting gaze that further pierced my heart; a look I would never forget and I would retain till perpetuity and think of it always whenever she came to my mind. And that is not going to be a few times, if my heart is to have its way.” - Faraaz Kazi

66. “Never annoy an inspirational author or you will become the poison in her pen and the villian in every one of her books.” - Shannon L. Alder

67. “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

68. “[M]ost people go through life a wee bit disappointed in themselves. I think we all keep a memory of a moment when we missed someone or something, when we could have gone down another path, a happier or better or just a different path. Just because they're in the past doesn't mean you can't treasure the possibilities ... maybe we put down a marker for another time. And now's the time. Now we can do whatever we want to do.” - James Robertson

69. “But she knew that no matter what beauty lay behind, it must remain there. No one could go forward with a load of aching memories.” - Margaret Mitchell

70. “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

71. “The most beautiful moments always seemed to accelerate and slip beyond one’s grasp just when you want to hold onto them for as long as possible.” - E.A. Bucchianeri

72. “ I knew then that I would devote every minute we had left together to making her happy, to repairing the pain I had caused her and returning to her what I never known how to give her. These pages will be our memory until she drows her last breath in my arms and I take her forever and escape at last to a place where neither heaven nor hell will ever be able to find us. ” - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

73. “It kind of scares me though, to keep wearing it every day like I do. What happens when I run out of it? Will I forget what she looked like? What it looked like when the sun reflected on her hair? The way her pillow always smelled like her? Will my memory of her run out too?” - Keary Taylor

74. “كيف نحفظ دون أن نفهم ونحن أطفال لا نفرق بين الحلال والحرام ولا نميز بين الصواب والخطأ، فالاستفسار يعني المعارضة بالنسبة لهم مما يؤدي للقمع والضرب دون رحمة، وعواقب طويلة الأجل، لا زالت تفاصيل الطفولة عالقة بذاكرتي.” - سهام محمد

75. “Remember me, even if it's only in a corner and secretly. Don't let me go.” - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

76. “Dreams are composed of many things, my son. Of images and hopes, of fears and memories. Memories of the past, and memories of the future...” - Neil Gaiman

77. “The thing is, all memory is fiction. You have to remember that. Of course, there are things that actually, certifiably happened, things you can pinpoint the day, the hour, the minute. When you think about it, though, those things, mostly seem to happen to other people. This story actually happened, and it happened pretty much the way I am going to tell it to you. It's a true story as much as six decades or telling and remembering can allow it to be true. Time changes things, and you don't always get everything right. You remember a little thing clear as a bell, the weather, say, or the splash of light on the river's ripples as the sun was going down into the black pines. things not even connected to anything in particular, while other things, big things even, come completely disconnected and no longer have any shape or sound. The little things seem more real than the big things.” - Robert Goolrick

78. “Everyone is born and they die, but it's the memories they leave behind that define them and let them live on than others.” - Judi Fennell

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

80. “Toy is talking and this is why I love her. She can go on about herself ceaselessly and like the scratching of a branch against the window at night, the steady insistence of it is comforting. She has stories without beginnings, stories that trail off, stories that crisscross and contradict and dead end.Toy is the star of her stories. Events orbit her like a constellation.” - Erica Lorraine Scheidt

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

82. “The ethics of eating people are blurry at best in the fog of my undead amnesia, but I expect more for such a high price. What I want are the moments I will never have. The warm ones. The living ones.” - Isaac Marion

83. “Depression is a red herring," said Nariman. "I think a lot about the past, it's true. But at my age, the past is more present than the here and now. and there is not much percentage in the future.” - Rohinton Mistry

84. “I had no eyelashes left. So when I cried, the tears rolled down, unabated to my mouth. My saliva tasted those days, like a salt lake. Or so he said.'('Left from Dhakeshwari')” - Kunal Sen

85. “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

86. “Memories are reality's ghosts” - BJ Neblett

87. “Staring out to sea, I finally forced myself to stop thinking of her as someone still somewhere, if only in memory, still obscurely alive, breathing, doing, moving, but as a shovelful of ashes already scattered; as a broken link, a biological dead end, an eternal withdrawal from reality, a once complex object that now dwindled, dwindled, left nothing behind except a l like a fallen speck of soot on a blank sheet of paper.” - John Fowles

88. “Writing from memory like this, I often feel a pang of dread. What if I've forgotten the most important thing? What if somewhere inside me there is a dark limbo where all the the truly important memories are heaped and slowly turning into mud?” - Haruki Murakami

89. “The memories that really matter don't live in the mind.” - Jessica Brody

90. “You pay for what you get, you own what you pay for... and sooner or later whatever you own comes back home to you.” - Stephen King

91. “The past is our ultimate privacy; we pile it up, year by year, decade by decade, it stows itself away, with its perverse random recall system.” - Penelope Lively

92. “It was one of those rare times when remembering the dead was more inmportant than tending to the needs of the living.” - Dean Koontz

93. “He will miss this quiet full of noise: the nighthawks, the way the woods breathe, the things moving unsuspected through the dark. But he will take with him the canisters full of blasted images and have the pleasure of living them again. They are not nothing, the memories.” - Lauren Groff

94. “In the West we cling to the past like limpets. In Haiti the present is the axis of all life. As in Africa, past and future are but distant measures of the present, and memories are as meaningless as promises.” - Wade Davis

95. “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

96. “If you see an old man talking to himself, he might not be a fool or crazy. He might be sharing a conversation with the past, warmed by a memory he need not reveal.” - Steven Merle Scott

97. “بعض الذكريات أشد من ضرب السياط-فاطمة زكى_” - بقلم فاطمة زكى

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

99. “He considered razing the house and rebuilding, but he realized that houses are not haunted, and regardless of the architecture with which we surround ourselves,our ghosts stay with us until we ourselves are ghosts.” - Dean Koontz