Retentive Quotes & Sayings

As a person with the retentive mental capacity of a goldfish and a dislike of repetition, I frequently make use of the thesaurus built into my Microsoft Word U.K. Software. — Meg Rosoff

Part of the function of memory is to forget; the omni-retentive mind will break down and produce at best an idiot savant who can recite a telephone book, and at worst a person to whom every grudge and slight is as yesterday's. — Christopher Hitchens

If any one faculty of our nature may be called more wonderful than the rest, I do think it is memory. There seems something more speakingly incomprehensible in the powers, the failures, the inequalities of memory, than in any other of our intelligences. The memory is sometimes so retentive, so serviceable, so obedient; at others, so bewildered and so weak; and at others again, so tyrannic, so beyond control! We are, to be sure, a miracle every way; but our powers of recollecting and of forgetting do seem peculiarly past finding out. — Jane Austen

Think of the most fussy science teacher you ever had. The one who docked your grade if the sixth decimal place in your answer was rounded incorrectly; who tucked in his periodic table T-shirt, corrected every student who said "weight" when he or she meant "mass", and made everyone, including himself, wear goggles even while mixing sugar water. Now try to imagine someone whom your teacher would hate for being anal-retentive. That is the kind of person who works for a bureau of standards and measurement. — Sam Kean

That's fucking gay. Everything is gay. — Unknown Author 204

I am an omnivorous reader with a strangely retentive memory for trifles. — Arthur Conan Doyle

One argument against open systems is that they become open to everything, good and bad. Like a Richard Meier skyscraper, the anal retentive, Bauhaus elegance of the Mac does prevent the loose ends and confusion of a less sterile environment. But it also prevents fertility. Apple's development must come from within. — Douglas Rushkoff

Serge's attention-deficit disorder was the first of many hyphens. Obsessive-compulsive, manic-depressive, anal-retentive, paranoid-schizophrenic. He was believed to be the only self-inflicted case of shaken-baby syndrome. — Tim Dorsey

I'm anal retentive. I'm a workaholic. I have insomnia. And I'm a control freak. That's why I'm not married. Who could stand me? — Madonna

A retentive memory may be a good thing, but the ability to forget is the true token of greatness. — Elbert Hubbard

Creator of all things, true source of light and wisdom, origin of all being, graciously let a ray of your light penetrate the darkness of my understanding. Take from me the double darkness in which I have been born, an obscurity of sin and ignorance. Give me a keen understanding, a retentive memory, and the ability to grasp things correctly and fundamentally. Grant me the talent of being exact in my explanations and the ability to express myself with thoroughness and charm. Point out the beginning, direct the progress, and help in the completion. — Thomas Aquinas

Pale ink is better than the most retentive memory. — Harvey MacKay

Nothing is so retentive as a nation's memory. — Joseph A. Schumpeter

The memory is sometimes so retentive, so serviceable, so obedient-at others so bewildered and weak-and at others again, so tyrannic, so beyond control! — Jane Austen

The typical analytic complaint about continental philosophy is that it is unrigorous, muddleheaded, subjectivist, inattentive to science, and written in impenetrable prose. The typical continental complaint about analytic philosophy is that it is superficial, reductionistic, anal retentive, inattentive to human concerns, and boring. — Edward Feser

In the morning this light breasts your windowpane and, having pried your eye open like a shell, runs ahead of you, strumming its lengthy rays - like a hot-footed schoolboy running his stick along the iron grate of the park or garden - along arcades, colonnades, red-brick chimneys, saints and lions. "Depict! Depict!" it cries to you, either mistaking you for some Canaletto or Carpaccio or Guardi, or because it doesn't trust your retina's ability to retain what it makes available, not to mention your brain's capacity to absorb it. Perhaps art is simply an organism's reaction against its retentive limitations. At any rate, you obey the command and grab your camera, supplementing both your brain cells and your pupil. Should this city ever be short of cash, it can go straight to Kodak for assistance - or else tax its products savagely. By the same token, as long as this place exists, as long as winter light shines upon it, Kodak shares are the best investment. — Joseph Brodsky

Soon, however, she began to reason with herself, and try to be feeling less. Eight years, almost eight years had passed, since all had been given up. How absurd to be resuming the agitation which such an interval had banished into distance and indistinctness! What might not eight years do? Events of every description, changes, alienations, removals,
all, all must be comprised in it; and oblivion of the past
how natural, how certain too! It included nearly a third part of her own life.
Alas! with all her reasonings, she found, that to retentive feelings eight years may be little more than nothing. — Jane Austen

Therein, ye gods, ye make the weak most strong;
Therein, ye gods, you tyrants do defeat.
Nor stony wall, nor walls of beaten brass,
Nor airless dungeon, nor strong links of iron,
Can be retentive to the strength of spirit:
But life being weary of these worldly bars
Never lacks power to dismiss itself. — William Shakespeare

You can argue that it expresses a degree of difference between He closed the door and He slammed the door, and you'll get no argument from me . . . . but what about context? What about all the enlightening (not to say emotionally moving) prose which came before He closed the door firmly? Shouldn't this tell us how he closed the door? And if the foregoing prose does tell us, isn't firmly an extra word? Isn't it redundant? Someone out there is now accusing me of being tiresome and anal-retentive. I deny it. I believe the road to hell is paved with adverbs, and I will shout it from the rooftops. — Stephen King

There is no memory or retentive faculty based on lasting impression. What we designate as memory is but increased responsiveness to repeated stimuli. — Nikola Tesla

Yes, anally retentive men are my forte! — Geoffrey Rush

Cal: "I'm not presuming. I know exactly what you think about me. You think I'm an anal-retentive Armrest Nazi ... an arrogant Modelizer. You can't stand the way I talk, any of the subjects I choose to talk about, the imperious manner I order food in restaurants or tell cab drivers how much we owe them. You find my taste in women odious, the fact that I don't own a television an unforgivable sin, and the fact that I would choose to write a book about Saudi Arabia completely unfathomable. And you're also totally in love with me. If you weren't you wouldn't have pushed me into the pool earlier today when you saw Grazi walk in."
Every Boy's Got One — Meg Cabot

The moderate are not usually the most sincere, for the same circumspection which makes them moderate makes them likewise retentive of what could give offence. — Walter Savage Landor

Studies show that the IQ range of most creative people is surprisingly narrow, around 120 to 130. Higher IQs can perform certain kinds of tasks better
logic, feats of memory, and so on. But if the IQ is much higher or lower than that, the window of creativity closes. Nonetheless, for some reason we believe more is better, so people yearn for tip-top IQs, and that calls for bigger memories. A fast, retentive memory is handy, but no skeleton key for survival. — Diane Ackerman

Perhaps art is simply an organism's reaction against its retentive limitations. — Joseph Brodsky

Call me anal retentive, but I like nothing more than trying to solve life's problems with a good spreadsheet. — Stephanie Blackmoore

unequivocal anal-retentive clutter buster — Katherine Bayless