"As I was leaving this morning, I said to myself 'the last thing you must do is forget your speech.' And sure enough, as I left the house this morning, the last thing I did was to forget my speech." - Rowan Atkinson, Live in Belfast

"The two offices of memory are collection and distribution." - Samuel Johnson

"If you wish to forget anything on the spot, make a note that this thing is to be remembered." - Edgar Allan Poe

"He who is not sure of his memory, should not undertake the trade of lying." - Montaigne, Michel de (1533-1592)

"Memories are hunting horns
Whose sound dies on the wind."
- GUILLAUME APOLLINAIRE, Cors de chasse

"And we forget because we must
And not because we will."
- MATTHEW ARNOLD, Absence

"Not the power to remember, but its very opposite, the power to forget, is a necessary condition for our existence." - SHOLEM ASCH, The Nazarene

"God gave us memory so that we might have roses in December." - JAMES M. BARRIE, speech (1922)

"O Memory, thou fond deceiver,
Still importunate and vain,
To former joys recurring ever,
And turning all the past to pain."
- OLIVER GOLDSMITH, The Captivity

"To endeavor to forget anyone is a certain way of thinking of nothing else." - LA BRUYERE, Les Caracteres

"The richness of life lies in memories we have forgotten." - CESARE PAVESE, diary entry The Burning Brand: Diaries 1935

"Time, which changes people, does not alter the image we have retained of them." - MARCEL PROUST, Remembrance of Things Past: The Past Recaptured

"Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad."
- CHRISTINA ROSSETTI, Remember

"Things that were hard to bear are sweet to remember." - SENECA, Hercules Furens