Other related topics at: All In Your Mind Knowledge/Learning 379. Memory; Oral Tradition "In an unwritten speech, nothing that is not very short is transmitted from one generation to another. Few have opportunities of hearing a long composition often enough to learn it, or have inclination to repeat it so often as is necessary to retain it; and what is once forgotten is lost for ever." Johnson: Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland Link 604. Contemplation; Memory "So few of the hours of life are filled up with objects adequate to the mind of man, and so frequently are we in want of present pleasure or employment, that we are forced to have recourse every moment to the past and future for supplemental satisfactions, and relieve the vacuities of our being by recollections of former passages, or anticipation of events to come." Johnson: Rambler #41 (August 7, 1750) Link 605. Animals; Memory "Of memory, which makes so large a part of the excellence of the human soul, and which has so much influence upon all its other powers, but a small portion has been allotted to the animal world. We do not find the grief with which the dams lament the loss of their young proportionate to the tenderness with which they caress, the assiduity with which they feed, or the vehemence with which they defend them. Their regard for their offspring, when it is before their eyes, is not, in appearance, less than that of a human parent; but when it is taken away, it is very soon forgotten, and, after a short absence, if brought again, wholly disregarded. "That they have very little remembrance of any thing once out of the reach of their senses, and scarce any power of comparing the present with the past, and regulating their conclusions from experience, may be gathered from this, that their intellects are produced in their full perfection. The sparrow that was hatched last spring makes her first nest the ensuing season of the same materials, and with the same art as in any following year; and the hen conducts and shelters her first brood of chickens with all the prudence she ever attains." Johnson: Rambler #41 (August 7, 1750) Link 606. Memory; Technology "We do not know in what either reason or instinct consists, and therefore cannot tell with exactness how they differ; but surely he that contemplates a ship and a bird's nest will not be long without finding out that the idea of the one was impressed at once, and continued through all the progressive descents of the species, without variation or improvement; and that the other is the result of experiments compared with experiments, has grown, by accumulated observation, from less to greater excellence, and exhibits the collective knowledge of different ages and various professions. "Memory is the purveyor of reason, the power which places those images before the mind upon which the judgment is to be exercised, and which treasures up the determinations that are once passed, as the rules of future action, or grounds of subsequent conclusions." Johnson: Rambler #41 (August 7, 1750) Link 607. Choice; Memory; Volition "It is ... the faculty of remembrance which may be said to place us in the class of moral agents. If we were to act only in consequence of some immediate impulse, and receive no direction from internal motives of choice, we should be pushed forward by an invincible fatality, without power or reason for the most part to prefer one thing to another, because we could make no comparison but of objects which might both happen to be present." Johnson: Rambler #41 (August 7, 1750) Link 608. Contemplation; Memory "We owe to memory not only the increase of our knowledge, and our progress in rational inquiries, but many other intellectual pleasures. Indeed, almost all that we can be said to enjoy is past or future; the present is in perpetual motion, leaves us as soon as it arrives, ceases to be present before its presence is well perceived, and is only known to have existed by the effects which it leaves behind. The greatest part of our ideas arises, therefore, from the view before or behind us, and we are happy or miserable according as we are affected by the survey of our life, or our prospect of future existence." Johnson: Rambler #41 (August 7, 1750) Link 609. Contemplation; Imagination; Futurity; Memory "It is ... much more common for the solitary and thoughtful to amuse themselves with schemes of the future, than reviews of the past. For the future is pliant and ductile, and will be easily moulded by a strong fancy into any form. But the images which memory presents are of a stubborn and untractable nature, the objects of remembrance have already existed, and left their signature behind them impressed upon the mind, so as to defy all attempts of erasure or of change. "As the satisfactions, therefore, arising from memory are less arbitrary, they are more solid, and are, indeed, the only joys which we can call our own." Johnson: Rambler #41 (August 7, 1750) Link 1,470. Happiness; Hope; Memory; Satisfaction "It seems to be the fate of man to seek all his consolations in futurity. The time present is seldom able to fill desire or imagination with immediate enjoyment, and we are forced to supply its deficiencies by recollection or anticipation." Johnson: Rambler #203 (February 25, 1752) Link 1,471. Memory; Satisfaction "So full is the world of calamity that every source of pleasure is polluted, and every retirement of tranquility disturbed. When time has supplied us with events sufficient to employ our thoughts, it has mingled them with so many disasters that we shrink from their remembrance, dread their intrusion upon our minds, and fly from them as from enemies that pursue us with torture." Johnson: Rambler #203 (February 25, 1752) Link 1,472. Memory "There are few higher gratifications than that of reflection on surmounted evils, when they were not incurred by our fault, and neither reproach us with cowardice nor guilt." Johnson: Rambler #203 (February 25, 1752) Link 1,705. Memory "Memory is, among the faculties of the human mind, that of which we make the most frequent use, or rather that of which the agent is incessant or perpetual. Memory is the primary and fundamental power, without which there could be no other intellectual operation." Johnson: Idler #44 (February 17, 1759) Link 1,706. Memory "Such is the necessary concatenation of our thoughts, that good and evil are linked together, and no pleasure recurs but associated with pain. Every revived idea reminds us of a time when something was enjoyed that is now lost, when some hope was not yet blasted, when some purpose had not yet languished into sluggishness or indifference." Johnson: Idler #44 (February 17, 1759) Link 1,707. Memory "Whether it be that life has more vexations than comforts, or, what is in the event just the same, that evil makes deeper impression than good, it is certain that few can review the time past without heaviness of heart." Johnson: Idler #44 (February 17, 1759) Link 1,770. Memory "It would add much to human happiness, if an art could be taught of forgetting all of which the remembrance is at once useless and afflictive, if that pain which never can end in pleasure could be driven totally away, that the mind might perform its functions without incumbrance, and the past might no longer encroach upon the present." Johnson: Idler #72 (September 1, 1759) Link 1,779. Memory "It is the practice of many readers to note, in the margin of their books, the most important passages, the strongest arguments, or the brightest sentiments. Thus they load their minds with superfluous attention, repress the vehemence of curiosity by useless deliberation, and by frequent interruption break the current of narration or the chain of reason, and at last close the volume, and forget the passages and marks together." Johnson: Idler #74 (September 15, 1759) Link 1,780. Memory "Others I have found unalterably persuaded, that nothing is certainly remembered but what is transcribed; and they have therefore passed weeks and months in transferring large quotations to a common-place book. Yet, why any part of a book, which can be consulted at pleasure, should be copied, I was never able to discover. The hand has no closer correspondence with the memory than the eye. The act of writing itself distracts the thoughts, and what is read twice is commonly better remembered than what is transcribed. This method, therefore, consumes time, without assisting memory." Johnson: Idler #74 (September 15, 1759) Link 1,781. Attention; Memory; Reading "The true art of memory is the art of attention. No man will read with much advantage, who is not able, at pleasure, to evacuate his mind, or who brings not to his author an intellect defecated and pure, neither turbid with care, nor agitated by pleasure. If the repositories of thought are already full, what can they receive? If the mind is employed on the past or future, the book will be held before the eyes in vain." Johnson: Idler #74 (September 15, 1759) Link 1,782. Attention; Memory; Reading "What is read with delight is commonly retained, because pleasure always secures attention but the books which are consulted by occasional necessity, and perused with impatience, seldom leave any traces on the mind." Johnson: Idler #74 (September 15, 1759) Link