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Nostalgic memories can be difficult to deal with, but with the right quotes, you can turn them into unforgettable sources of inspiration, whether you are:
Therefore, here is a list of 64 quotes – cited from experts in making memories, bestselling writers, and successful people – about all kinds of memories, from the happy ones you create with your friends and family to childhood times and the sad moments when people lose their love.
1. "The best part of memories is making them"
- Meik Wiking
2. "Life must be lived forwards, but understood backwards."
- Søren Kierkegaard
3. "You shouldn’t wait for other people to make special things happen. You have to create your own memories."
- Heidi Klum
4. "The most beautiful things are not associated with money; they are memories and moments. If you don’t celebrate those, they can pass you by."
- Alek Wek
5. "Adventure is important in life. Making memories matters (…) Effort from imagination and following adventure creates stories that you keep forever. And anyone can do it."
- Rob Lowe
6. "Humans, not places, make memories"
- Ama Ata Aidoo
About quote's author: Ama Ata Aidoo shared the above quote from her expertise as a nomad Ghanaian writer that made various memories as a student in her own country and as a frequent attendee of USA fellowships and other professorships in Kenya or US.
7. "Close friends are truly life’s treasures. Sometimes they know us better than we know ourselves. With gentle honesty, they are there to guide and support us, to share our laughter and our tears. Their presence reminds us that we are never really alone."
- Vincent Van Gogh
8. "Truly great friends are hard to find, difficult to leave, and impossible to forget."
- G. Randolf
9. "So long as the memory of certain beloved friends lives in my heart, I shall say that life is good."
- Helen Keller
10. "Someday many years from now, we’ll sit beside the candle’s glow, exchanging tales about our past and laughing as the memories flow. And when that distant day arrives, I know it will be understood, that friendship is the key to live, and we were friends and it was good."
- Eileen Hehl
11. "I haven’t seen you in a while, yet I often imagine all your expressions. I haven’t spoken to you recently, but many times I hear your thoughts. Good friends must not always be together. It is the feeling of oneness, when distant that proves a lasting."
- Unknown, presumably Orson Welles
Memories made in a family, especially during childhood, are some of the sweetest ones, but below you can also find quotes about school and college moments, which can also be unforgettable.
12. "The memories we make with our family is everything."
- Candace Cameron Bure
13. "A life-long blessing for children is to fill them with warm memories of times together. Happy memories become treasures in the heart to pull out on the tough days of adulthood."
- Charlotte Kasl
14. "What we remember from childhood, we remember forever — permanent ghosts, stamped, inked, imprinted, eternally seen."
- Cynthia Ozick
About quote's author: Cynthia Ozick is a talented American novelist who focuses on themes that involve the recollection of memories, like the disparaged self, the reconstruction of identity after immigration, and trauma.
15. "High school is what kind of grows you into the person you are. I have great memories, good and bad, some learning experiences and some that I'll take with me the rest of my life."
- Giancarlo Stanton
16. "To this day, I have the most fond memories of some of my old toys."
- Michael Keaton
17. "Childhood is what anyone wants to remember. It leaves behind no fossils, except perhaps in fiction."
- Carol Shields
Head over to our comprehensive list of quotes about family memories to find many more great sayings that make for brilliant memento captions.
18. "There's things that happen in a person's life that are so scorched in the memory and burned into the heart that there's no forgetting them."
- John Boyne
19. "If we remembered everything, we should on most occasions be as ill off as if we remembered nothing"
- William James
20. "Memories, even your most precious ones, fade surprisingly quickly. But I don’t go along with that. The memories I value most, I don’t ever see them fading."
- Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go
21. "If you want people to remember you, you need to give them something to remember you by."
- Meik Wiking
22. "It is easy to love people in memory; the hard thing is to love them when they are there in front of you."
- John Updike, My Father's Tears and Other Stories
23. "When we lose one we love, our bitterest tears are called forth by the memory of hours when we loved not enough."
- Maurice Maeterlinck
24. "Anyone who falls in love is searching for the missing pieces of themselves. So anyone who's in love gets sad when they think of their lover. It's like stepping back inside a room you have fond memories of, one you haven't seen in a long time."
- Haruki Murakami
About quote's author: Haruki Murakami is an awarded Japanese writer who has sold millions of copies outside Japan. The Guardian described Murakami as "among the world's greatest living novelists."
25. "Lost love is still love. It takes a different form, that's all. You can't see their smile or bring them food or tousle their hair or move them around a dance floor. But when those senses weaken another heightens. Memory. Memory becomes your partner. You nurture it. You hold it. You dance with it."
- Mitch Albom
26. "Love is a really scary thing, and you never know what's going to happen. It's one of the most beautiful things in life, but it's one of the most terrifying. It's worth the fear because you have more knowledge, experience, you learn from people, and you have memories."
- Ariana Grande
About quote's author: Ariana Grande is an awarded American singer who had many memories of love with different celebrities, and she went through happy and tough times, especially as one of her lovers, Mac Miller, died two months after their split due to a suspected overdose.
27. "We fell in love, despite our differences, and once we did, something rare and beautiful was created. For me, love like that has only happened once, and that's why every minute we spent together has been seared in my memory. I'll never forget a single moment of it."
- Nicholas Sparks, The Notebook
28. "The heart that truly loves never forgets."
- Proverb
29. "Perhaps love is like a resting place, a shelter from the storm. It exists to give you comfort, it is there to keep you warm, and in those times of trouble when you are most alone, the memory of love will bring you home."
- John Denver
30. "Memories are what warms you up from the inside."
- Haruki Murakami
31. "Some things don't last forever, but some things do. Like a good song, or a good book, or a good memory you can take out and unfold in your darkest times, pressing down on the corners and peering in close, hoping you still recognize the person you see there."
- Sarah Dessen, This Lullaby
About quote's author: Sarah Dessen is an awarded American novelist who has been featured on the New York Times' bestseller list and has been contacted by Netflix to adapt some of her novels.
32. "Our memories are the only paradise from which we can never be expelled."
- Jean-Paul Richter
33. "It takes one thought, one second, one moment or positive memory to act as a catalyst for the light to gradually seep in again."
- Fearne Cotton
34. "The value of a smile... It costs nothing, but creates much. It enriches those who receive, without impoverishing those who give. It happens in a flash and the memory of it sometimes lasts forever."
- Dale Carnegie
35. "When it comes to memories, the good and the bad never balance."
- Jodi Picoult
36. "Grief and memory go together. After someone dies, that’s what you’re left with. And the memories are so slippery yet so rich."
- Mike Mills
37. "Memories can also be a burden that we carry around with us. Not every memory is a happy one."
- Meik Wiking
38. "No matter how much suffering you went through, you never wanted to let go of those memories."
- Haruki Murakami
39. "The worst part of holding the memories is not the pain. It's the loneliness of it. Memories need to be shared."
- Lois Lowry, The Giver
As a bonus for people who have sad memories, here is Adam Levine's song "Memories", dedicated "for anyone who has ever experienced loss. In other words, this song is for all of us," in Levine's words.
40. "For some, life lasts a short while, but the memories it holds last forever."
- Laura Swenson
41. "Our memory is our coherence; it’s experiencing being the same person over time."
- Luis Buñuel
42. "Take care of all your memories. For you cannot relive them."
- Bob Dylan
43. "Enjoy good memories. But don’t spend your remaining days here looking back, wishing for ‘the good old days."
- Randy Alcorn
44. "The past beats inside me like a second heart."
- John Banville (The Sea)
45. "I can only note that the past is beautiful because one never realises an emotion at the time. It expands later, and thus we don't have complete emotions about the present, only about the past."
- Virginia Woolf
46. "Things pass, and the best we can do is to let them really go away. Getting rid of certain memories also means making some room for other memories to take their place."
- Paulo Coelho
47. "Maybe our happiness depends not only on what we can remember but also on what we are able to forget."
- Meik Wiking
48. "When we think of the past it's the beautiful things we pick out."
- Margaret Atwood, "The Handmaid's Tale"
49. "One day your life will flash before your eyes. Make sure it's worth watching"
- Gerard Way
About quote's author: Gerard Way is a singer, songwriter, and comic book writer. The famous Netflix series The Umbrella Academy was adapted from Gerard Way's comic book series with the same name.
50. "Memory is the dairy we all carry about with us."
- Oscar Wilde
51. "God gave us memory so that we might have roses in December."
- J.M. Barrie
52. "We didn't realize we were making memories, we just knew we were having fun."
- Winnie the Pooh
53. "People have an annoying habit of remembering things they shouldn't."
- Christopher Paolini, "Eragon"
54. "We all have our time machines, don't we. Those that take us back are memories... And those that carry us forward, are dreams."
- H.G. Wells
55. "One of the keys to happiness is a bad memory."
- Rita Mae Brown
56. "If you wish to forget anything on the spot, make a note that this thing is to be remembered."
- Edgar Allan Poe
57. "Do we leave places, or does a place leave us?"
- Meik Wiking
58. "What I like about photographs is that they capture a moment that’s gone forever, impossible to reproduce."
- Karl Lagerfeld
59. "The best part about pictures is that even when the people in the photo change, the memory it contains never will."
- Andy Warhol
60. "We do not remember days, we remember moments."
- Cesare Pavese
61. "Perfume is the art that makes memory speak."
- Francis Kurkdijan
62. "Every man’s memory is his private literature."
- Aldous Huxley
63. "Memories, all those little experiences make up the fabric of our lives."
- Ben Affleck
64. "We're all just memories of our future selves."
- Reggie Watts
According to scientific studies, there are several factors that affect what memories we remember better, including:
Researchers got to the conclusion that humans retain happy memories better than sad ones, which they suggest is a characteristic that makes us more joyful and resilient.
However, science also says that people affected by depression can experience difficulty in reminding memories of the past and imagining the future.
In addition, another scientific study says that depressed individuals are more likely to remember sad experiences rather than positive ones.
Helpful tip: if you feel depressed, a NY psychologist says that watching animated movies is beneficial for your mind. You can also use apply these scienced-backed 11 tips to quickly improve your mood.
Furthermore, researchers proved there is a difference between what memories people from different cultures remember better.
While people in the Western culture tend to remember memories that bring forward their uniqueness, East Asian individuals are more prone to recall moments of social connection.
Memories are not only moments to go back to when boredom or nostalgia strikes. Scientific research says that remembering our past is fundamental, and in fact has four key roles:
Therefore, getting motivated by all the quotes about making and remembering memories in this article becomes even more important.
After reading so many quotes, it's time to make the most of it. Here is some practical advice on how to use all the 64 memory quotes:
To conclude, this list of quotes about making and remembering memories can help anyone cherish their past moments, be them happy or sad, and give, even to those old unforgettable childhood times, a fancier look, all of this while inspiring people around the world to go out there and forge new beautiful memories with their friends, family, and love partners, which they can compile in a sweet photo album or post on social platforms later on.
