Daily Inspiration Quote by Thomas Fuller

Fuller turns domestic thrift into a theology of the aftertaste. By calling memories "leftovers", he refuses the era's lofty, angelic language for the mind and instead frames remembrance as something saved, wrapped, and revisited. The metaphor is slyly moral: leftovers are proof you had enough to begin with, and that you chose not to waste it. Memory becomes both gratitude and discipline, a quietly Puritan economy applied to experience.

The "less visible form" matters. Leftovers sit out of sight until needed; so do memories, tucked away but ready to be reheated by a smell, a hymn, a grief. Fuller splits storage into two places: the "refrigerator of the mind" and the "cupboard of the heart". It's an early-modern version of cognitive versus affective memory, but expressed in kitchen terms. The refrigerator suggests preservation through coolness, order, and restraint - the mind as a place that keeps things from spoiling. The cupboard, warmer and more intimate, hints at the heart's tendency to hoard what it can't bear to discard, even when it goes stale.

Context sharpens the point. Fuller lived through the English Civil Wars, a period when loss, displacement, and ideological fracture made remembering both a comfort and a hazard. A clergyman writing for souls under pressure would naturally ask: what do you do with what remains? His answer: you store it. You don't deny the residue of life; you steward it. Memories aren't just souvenirs - they're rations for the future, evidence of providence, and, sometimes, burdens you keep because throwing them away would feel like sin.