Best 201 quotes in «the past quotes» category

A great mystery lies in the repetition and continuity of the renewal of that which is past. Culture perpetuates itself in memory and the big job is the reawakening of memory.

A kiss…. ….. is just a kiss…. Until it’s all you reminisce. (Then the memory becomes your most treasured possession.)

...before you, life was desolate - the past hardly worth remembering - and now, each moment a keepsake I can't throw away ...

A long time ago someone told me that a story will tell itself, when it's ready.

And the past, for those foolish enough to subscribe to it, holds a grudge harder than anything known to man.

and the stones, bewitched, can see: The lost hours and into the past.

As his boots walked towards the old station, he felt as though he were hallucinating. Scary apprehension increased the beat of his heart and the sweat upon his forehead was cold. The reality of where he stood created a sinking feeling inside of him. An old man everyone called Uncle Tucker once owned this place. His sole existence behind the counter all of the time, day and night. He could have been a creature out of a fairy tale, with his long white beard and equally long white hair. Merlin. The overalls and the ball cap perched upon his head, along with the half-smoked cigar with an endless burning orb positioned in his mouth. It made him a fixture in time. He wondered if Tucker would still be alive. Tucker with his endless stories of the 1960s, the Vietnam War, and flower children. A man that never left a country thousands of miles away where bicycles filled the capital. A man who never left those fields where killing occurred.

A vision of the little house in Soho flickered across his mind’s eye, his mother at a desk, writing in her journal, with hazy sunlight streaming through the morning windows. The woman inhabited a world he had once thought his own – a world of publishers and reliable suppliers. A London that was confident and competent amid its grey, puddle-strewn streets.

But I was still anxious. Trevor Trevor Trevor. I might have felt better if he were dead, I thought, since behind every memory of him was the possibility of reconciling, and thus more heartbreak and indignity. I felt weak. My nerves were frayed and fragile, like tattered silk. Sleep had not yet solved my crankiness, my impatience, my memory. It seemed like everything was now somehow linked to getting back what I'd lost. I could picture my selfhood, my past, my psyche like a dump truck filled with trash. Sleep was the hydraulic piston that lifted the bed of the truck up, ready to dump everything out somewhere, but Trevor was stuck in the tailgate, blocking the flow of garbage. I was afraid things would be like that forever.

Det förflutna, som är mitt och Johannes Lupigis och andras, börjar lagra upp sig framför mig såsom en framtid, vilken jag skall genomtränga. Det förflutna lagrar på det sättet upp sig framför oss alla. Vi står och trampar i detta och måste genomtränga det för att få kunskap. Vi har genomlevt - eller uppslukat - en del av det och nu måste vi genomtränga och svälja det igen för att bli fria genom kunskapen om hur det var. Så är antagligen kunskapslagen, vägen till erfarenhetens förvärv, har diakonen Anselmus sagt.

Early on, I was torn from my roots and found freedom.

Every moment is precious, even the ones behind me that I often reflect upon with a reserved smile. However…I seldom look back, only forward in anticipation of the next greater now.

Every time we break with the past, we break a promise.

Fear is caused by the uncertainty of the future. Sorrow is caused by the remembrance of the past. Try to keep your thoughts in the present, for the future we will never know and the past we may never understand.

Fear is the greatest enemy. Not our pasts. Never our future. "Bitter Wines

Forgetting is, I think, a form of protection.

For you are you, and I am I, and once we were we… but as long as I exist and so do you – know that I will always love you.

Almost all sadness comes from thinking about the past, and all worry from thinking about the future — present-mindedness is your only safe haven.

Already my childhood seemed far away—a remote age, faded and bittersweet, like dried flowers. Did I regret its loss, did I want it back? I didn't think so.

Always thinking is as tragic as never thinking.

-A mund të shlyhet e kalumja? -Unë mendoj që po. Çdo varrë mund të shërohet, nëqoftëse njeriu gjen barin përkatës.

And then I got to thinking about how, if someone met me for the first time now, they would need to know about Uncle Ed and my parents in order to understand me. Sometimes it feels as though I’m defined by all the people I’ve lost , like one of those negative-space pictures, where what’s not there is just as important as what is.

And this letter I didn't send how surprising to find it now. All this love I must have felt.

anytime you enjoy the sweet fruits of the tree, remember the dirty roots of the tree

Diamonds are held under tons and tons of pressure, extremely high temperatures of fire and shuffled under shifting of tectonic plates, for a long, long time! Yet when they come out from there and are put on display for their beauty; does anybody stop to evaluate the diamond based upon all the shit it's been through and say "Remember that disgusting hole it used to be in? I bet it was hell in there!" No, people don't remember where a diamond has come from; they just see the beauty of it now. But it wouldn't have become so beautiful, you know, if not for all of that! So why should we look at other people, or at ourselves and evaluate them/ourselves based upon their/our pasts? Shouldn't we forget that? And only see the beauty that is in front of our eyes? Whatever it was, it made you beautiful! And that is what matters!

Don’t be ruled by your past. Don’t be crippled by the past. Let the past be the past and focus on what is ahead. Remember however that if you neglect the most essential lessons of the past, you shall walk into the future with one leg.

Don't sacrifice the present and attempt to achieve the impossible- to completely correct the past... It's gone! Learn from it and move on...

Every city is a ghost. New buildings rise upon the bones of the old so that each shiny steel bean, each tower of brick carries within it the memories of what has gone before, an architectural haunting. Sometimes you can catch a glimpse of these former incarnations in the awkward angle of a street or filigreed gate, an old oak door peeking out from a new facade, the plaque commemorating the spot that was once a battleground, which became a saloon and is now a park.

had almost forgotten the wet brush of your kisses… soft as April snowflakes

Half of mindfulness is not thinking about what has, might have, could have, or should have happened, or what will, could, or should happen. The other half is not judging what is happening.

Happiness is like good health: when you have it, you don’t notice it. But as the years go by, oh, the memories, the memories of happiness past!

He'd viewed the past like Uncle Joseph's grave, an empty hole without life, waiting to be filled in by him. It never occurred to him that Paradis, the Marais Foncé, or the ridge, existed before he had the eyes to see them, or that older people had once been young. Now his eyes were opened and he wanted to understand the past." Jean Baptiste, The Last Lord of Paradise––Generation Two

He looked at me like I was the stars when all I’d ever felt like was the dark nothingness between them.

Her years in Gibson started a healing process. It began with faith, and forgiving. But healing didn't mean forgetting. But maybe forgetting wasn't necessary. The memories of her childhood provided a backdrop, a place to begin the changes that would make life better. She knew who she didn't want to be.

Guilt is an indulgence, it entangles you in the past.

He who knows the past well can best explain the present and can tell the probable certainties and uncertainties of the future better

He took his time looking around for anything interesting to salvage, but found only broken bits of what once was.

Had I known only tells us the regretful stories of yesterday better

I always thought it was pathetic that Reva had chosen to stay in the area after graduation, but passing through it in the cab, in my frenzied state of despair, I understood: there was stability in living in the past.

I am not where I need to be, but, thank God, I am not where I used to be.

I am seeking to rescue the poor stockinger, the Luddite cropper, the “obsolete” hand-loom weaver, the “utopian” artisan, and even the deluded follower of Joanna Southcott, from the enormous condescension of posterity. Their crafts and traditions may have been dying. Their hostility to the new industrialism may have been backward-looking. Their communitarian ideals may have been fantasies. Their insurrectionary conspiracies may have been foolhardy. But they lived through these times of acute social disturbance, and we did not. Their aspirations were valid in terms of their own experience…

I can never conceive of yesterday as being anything but behind me.

I didn't know the demons that walked across your memory. They came from the dust when you were at peace in your grave.

- I believe in unlimited discovery and achievement. - I believe that dreams can become reality. - I believe in true love. - I believe in kindness and intelligence. - I trust life, regardless.

If a memory wasn't a thing but a memory of a memory of a memory, mirrors set in parallel, then what the brain told you now about what it claimed had happened then would be coloured by what had happened in between. It was like a country remembering its history: the past was never just the past, it was what made the present able to live with itself.

...how time packs new years over the old ones but how those old years are still in there, like the earliest, tightest rings centering a tree, the most hidden, enclosed in darkness and shielded from weather. But then a saw screams in and the tree topples and the circles are stricken by the sun and the sap glistens and the stump is laid open for the world to see.

I’d never dreamed anybody could love me the way he did. And even when he proved it to me time and again – I still could hardly believe it was true.

If you cannot hold me in your arms, then hold my memory in high regard. And if I cannot be in your life, then at least let me live in your heart.

If one didn't let oneself swallow some few lies, I don't know how one would ever carry the past.

If you’re searching for a quote that puts your feelings into words – you won’t find it. You can learn every language and read every word ever written – but you’ll never find what’s in your heart. How can you? He has it.