If Memory Serves Quotes & Sayings

The study of law can be disappointing at times, a matter of applying narrow rules and arcane procedure to an uncooperative reality; a sort of glorified accounting that serves to regulate the affairs of those who have power
and that all too often seeks to explain, to those who do not, the ultimate wisdom and justness of their condition.
But that's not all the law is. The law is also memory; the law also records a long-running conversation, a nation arguing with its conscience. — Barack Obama

The image of feeling created by artists, in every kind of art
plastic, musical, poetic, balletic
serves to hold the reality itself for our labile and volatile memory, as a touchstone to test the scope of our intellectual constructions. — Susanne Katherina Langer

His memory is perfectly clear

and serves no good, no purpose
at all. He has seen things before

(the fly in the bottle,
the indeterminate will).

Santa Muerte, Saint Death,
we pray to you to swallow our breath. — Michael Palmer

Today, recall a favorite memory, which serves as a gateway to uplifting feelings and thoughts. — Doreen Virtue

His parenting never involved indulgence, just benign neglect. And having let me do as I wish for two decades, it seems a mean trick to impose discipline by marrying me off to some relic from another age."
"Perhaps."
"Who knows if the old baron is even up to the task of managing me! You say I'll give him fatal spasms." "Only if the drink doesn't kill him first," Clun quipped.
"He's a ... a tippler?" She asked.
"More than tipples, if memory serves. A bottomless cask. Mouth like a funnel on one end and a wee spigot at the other," he concluded with a wink. — Miranda Davis

The more we build these networks and enrich our stores of memory and experience, the easier it is to learn, because what we already know serves as a foundation for forming increasingly complex thoughts. — John J. Ratey

Aelin braced her forearms on the bar, crossing one ankle over the other. "Hello, Tern." Arobynn's second in command-or he had been two years ago. A vicious, calculating little prick who had always been more than eager to do Arobynn's dirty work. "I figured it was only a matter of time before one of Arobynn's dogs sniffed me out."
Tern flashed a too-bright smile. "If memory serves, you were always his favorite bitch. — Sarah J. Maas

The Democrats current crudeness is a function of their desperation, and the imminent ratification of Howard Dean, the least charming presidential candidate in recent memory, as their party chairman only serves to punctuate the problem. — Joe Klein

The most part of men, though they have the use of reasoning a little way, as in numbering to some degree; yet it serves them to little use in common life; in which they govern themselves, some better, some worse, according to their differences of experience, quickness of memory, and inclinations to several ends; but specially according to good or evil fortune, and the errors of one another. — Thomas Hobbes

These short stories establish Sontag's originality ... her unique vision, her success with experiments in the form ... Sontag makes a wonderful stew of the past, the life caught in memory and imagination, serves it all up lavishly laced with silences, and provides us with a gourmand's series of short courses. — Doris Grumbach

So, my conservative-looking, suit-wearing boss has a tattoo and has his penis pierced?" I ask with a smile.
Nate laughs and takes another pull on his beer. "Yes. You didn't seem to mind the piercing, if memory serves correctly. — Kristen Proby

But highly placed sources within the Kennedy Administration disagreed: "[T]he assumption that the strategic nuclear balance mattered in any way was wrong ... As far as I am concerned, it made no difference ... If my memory serves me correctly, we had some five thousand strategic nuclear warheads as against t heir three hundred. Can anyone seriously tell me that their having three hundred and forty would have made any difference? The military balance wasn't changed. I didn't believe it then, and I don't believe it now ... " — Robert McNamara

Just who has imposed on the suffering human race poison gas, barbed wire, high explosives, experiments in eugenics, the formula for zyklon b, heavy artillery, pseudo-scientific justifications for mass murder, cluster bombs, attack submarines, napalm, intercontinental missiles , military space platforms and nuclear weapons? If memory serves it was not the Vatican. — David Berlinski

There is an ancient Indian saying that something lives only as long as the last person who remembers it. My people have come to trust memory over history. Memory, like fire, is radiant and immutable while history serves only those who seek to control it, those who douse the flame of memory in order to put out the dangerous fire of truth. Beware these men for they are dangerous themselves and unwise. Their false history is written in the blood of those who might remember and of those who seek the truth. — Floyd Red Crow Westerman

If my memory serves, teenagers always know more than adults think they do, and the same teenagers always understand what they know a little less than they think they do. All that intensity and lack of experience and attempts to compensate with cynicism make it hard to sort out nuances. "Yeah, — Elliott James

Memory is a wonderfully useful tool, and without it judgement does its work with difficulty; it is entirely lacking in me ... Now,the more I distrust my memory, the more confused it becomes. It serves me better by chance encounter; I have to solicit it nonchalantly. For if I press it, it is stunned; and once it has begun to totter, the more I probe it, the more it gets mixed up and embarrassed. It serves me at its own time, not at mine. — Michel De Montaigne

Our essential humanity is dependent upon humankind's ability to join the past and the future with the present. Recollections and future projections grant us the ability to cogitate, analyze, and evaluate. Contrasting memories enable us to ascertain what is true and false, and determine what is charming, attractive, stunning, or sublime. Remembrance of the past serves to comfort us, awareness of the future offers us hope, while our dutiful engagement in the present is capable of arresting our complete attention. — Kilroy J. Oldster

Stored in everyone's memory are past experiences of terror. By reminding you of those feelings, fear is trying to protect you from repeating the traumas of the past. As long as you push down your fear, you will not be able to receive it as an ally. But by the same token you can't just act on the basis of fear. At the soul level you see no need for fear, because you don't need protecting. Living in the now poses no threat, and referring to the past therefore serves no purpose. It is safe to go into your fear and ask it where it came from and what it wants you to know. Having seen the world from its perspective, reassure yourself that the soul needs no guardian. Learn from fear, heal it, and ask it to leave. — Deepak Chopra

Memory Serves." Duplicitous couplet. — David Mitchell

Once, if my memory serves me well, my life was a banquet where every heart revealed itself, where every wine flowed. — Arthur Rimbaud

George Jones and I happen to share the same birthday. The first and only time I met him (which I believe was at the Opry if my memory serves me), I told him that. His response, 'You must be trouble.' Takes one to know one, I am so proud to say. George, his music and his mischievous trouble, will all be missed. He is a country legend. — Jennifer Nettles

We all have strategies to distract ourselves from what we cannot bear. Memory, for example, serves such a function. — Paul Park

You'll not go anywhere," he announced. "Yes, I will," she said, through gritted teeth. "You'll use a chamber pot." "I will not!" He thrust his hand in front of her face. The heavy silver ring sat prominently on his middle finger. "This says you'll obey me," he growled. "You'll use the chamber pot because I command you to do so!" "You'll have to hold me there and that just isn't going to happen," Jessica argued. "What is the difference between that and - " "Richard!" He made a sound of impatience. "'Tis nothing to be ashamed of, Jessica. I would expect the same care from you. And if memory serves, I had it when I had the fever before. Isn't that so?" "It was different." "Aye, 'twas me with my arse bared to the daylight! — Lynn Kurland

The FMSF achieved prominence partly as a response to increased possibilities for women to institute criminal or civil proceedings that relate to historical abuse, and women do not often take their abusers to court. The foundation's framing of abuse serves an ulterior strategic purpose of constructing a narrative position that isolates the incest survivor in an adversarial setting of interpreter distrust and challenged. — Sue Campbell

I nearly dropped the plate I held. "You've asked me out tons of times."
"Not really. I've made inapproprite suggestions and frequently pushed for nudity. But I've never asked you out on a real date. And, if memory serves, you did say you'd give me a fair chance once I let you clean out my trust fund."
"I didn't clean it out," I scoffed. — Richelle Mead

A great man quotes bravely, and will not draw on his invention when his memory serves him with a word just as good. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

I'm sorry to see that again we are turning to the courts for decisions that concern ethics. I think theologians and ethicists would better guide us in such matters, ... If my memory serves me well, more than a decade ago The Episcopal Church said euthanasia or the intentional shortening of an individual's life, by lethal doses of drugs or otherwise, was not acceptable. — Susan P. Crawford

If memory serves, it takes him quite a while to re-grow a head... — Daniel Way

Fascinating,' said Darvin. 'The mystery of life. The miracle of reproduction. I don't know why I didn't learn all this in school.' 'I did not,' said Orro. 'I read it in an imaginative but broadly accurate illustrated treatise inscribed, if memory serves, on the wall of a municipal pissery. — Ken MacLeod

In his family the dead were much discussed. He absorbed the content of these conversations and transmuted them into what passed for memory. This serves the purpose. The dead don't come back, to quibble or correct. — Hilary Mantel

The borrowing is often honest enough, and comes of magnanimity and stoutness. A great man quotes bravely and will not draw on his invention when his memory serves him with a word as good. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

For true Magick means "to employ one set of natural forces at a mechanical advantage as against another set" - I quote, as closely as memory serves, Thomas Henry Huxley, when he explains that when he lifts his water-jug - or his elbow - he does not "defy the Law of Gravitation." On the contrary, he uses that Law; its equations form part of the system by which he lifts the jug without spilling the water. — Aleister Crowley

They came to know the incorrigible sorrow of all prisoners and exiles, which is to live in company with a memory that serves no purpose. — Albert Camus

I once had a book on the stars but now I don't. My memory serves but not stellar, ha. So I made up constellations. I made a Bear and a Goat but maybe not where they are supposed to be, I made some for the animals that once were, the ones I know about. — Peter Heller

If memory serves, the last time we met there were also exploding starships," I said, to Wilson. "That's odd," Lowen said. "The last time I saw Harry, there were exploding starships, too." "It's coincidental," Wilson said, looking at Lowen and then at me. — John Scalzi

As we grow older we let go a little at a time: a bad memory, a negative habit, a toxic friend. Bit by bit we shed what no longer serves us until we reveal who we are underneath it all. We soon discover that even though we gave up many things, there is no feeling of loss. What we have gained in return is far more valuable. — Emily Maroutian

If memory serves me correctly, and it doesn't always, Kate [DiCamillo] and I met in the fall of 2001 at the former Figlio's restaurant in Minneapolis. We were laughing within a minute of meeting - always a good sign. — Kate DiCamillo