WEB EDITOR'S NOTE: The following excerpt is taken from The Intellectual Life: Its Spirit, Conditions, Methods by A.D. Sertillanges, O.P. (translated by Mary Ryan, M.A.).

On Memory and What to Remember

         We do not live by memory, we use our memory to live. Engrave on your mind whatever can help you to conceive or carry out a project, whatever your soul can assimilate, whatever can serve your purpose, vivify your inspiration, and sustain your work. As for the rest, consign it to oblivion. And if it is possible that on occasion many things may be useful which did not seem likely to be so, and in fact are not usually so, that is not a reason for saying: let us remember them on the off chance. If need be you will look them up again; they will easily be preserved on paper. On the pretext that you may have to catch a train, you do not learn Bradshaw by heart.

         Pascal said that he did not think he had ever forgotten a thing that he wanted to remember; that is the right sort of memory, on condition that one wants to remember only what is useful. When St. Augustine defines happiness as "desiring nothing but the good and having all that one desires," he is equally defining the best kind of memory. Entrust to yours all that is good, ask God to give you if He will the grace of Pascal, that of St. Thomas "in whom nothing went to waste," or that of Mozart who after one hearing reproduced a whole solemn Mass. But I repeat that such a grace is not necessary; one can supply its place without suffering any real harm. And what is the good of trying to estimate its value seeing that we have to make use of what has been given us, not of what we lack!