Best 41 quotes in «past and present quotes» category

All events of the past withered to mere skeletons, veined and fleshed of fancy.

A library may be described as a gigantic mincing-machine into which the labours of the past are flung, to be turned out again in a slightly altered form as the literature of the present.

A peep into the future, gives us a reflection of the past, and a picture of the present

A person who can not deal with the past of others, can not deal with yours.

Fuck the past. This was the present.

Because if every moment of a life is present in every other, so is every old self you've ever tried to outrun. And then how to know—the present self having always felt flimsy, somehow, compared to the one so acutely alive under the kitchen table—which you, specifically, is the real one?

A person who is happy is not thinking about the past.

És meséltem neked az emlékeimről. Nem mindenről. Célt tűztem ki magamnak, és nem akarlak a múltam meséivel untatni. Inkább arról a különös érzésről meséltem, hogy az emlékek valóságosabbá váltak számomra, mint az életem. Arról, hogy minden figyelmeztetés nélkül egyszerre ott vagyok, és csalódás, amikor kinyitom a szemem, és 1999-ben találom magam; ahogy az idő szövete változik, és én otthonosabban érzem magam a múltban, ebben a furcsa és fakó tapasztalatban pedig, amit közmegegyezéssel jelennek nevezünk, pusztán látogatónak.

I don't remember much, which is a kind of mercy,I suppose. I see it in patterns. Sometimes it's like a scribble on a wall- no matter how many times you paint over it, a bit of it always comes through, but not enough to put together the whole. I try not to think about it too much.

He may actually have been existing in the past and approximating a conceivable future, which brought even the assumption of his immediate perceptions as being in the present into doubt. And thus, he couldn’t—beyond a hint of skepticism—say that he truly existed right now and in this moment, but instead it seemed more rational to assume that he simply existed and nothing more.

He ought to let the past keep its glow and not try to mix it with what he had in the present.

It's all history out there, Clemens. Your history, my history. You and me, boy, not dates and things. You and me. That's what history is all about. How we came to be here, in the way we are, the clothes we wear.

If you're going to make the past your present, be prepared for a lifetime of dust ...

Look at the swell. You'll not find a bigger swell anywhere. It has half the globe for its run-up. You're young. You have the whole world. Don't bother yourself with the past.

My past takes no hostages, no prisoners. I've let go of yesterday and am free to receive the beautiful gift of the present.

Old places fire the internal weather of our pasts. The mild winds, aching calms, and hard storms of forgotten emotions return to us when we return to the spots where they happened.

...only think a moment that we are here now, and that that was then, and it has come to this, and how odd, odd, odd it is!

Only by acceptance of the past will you alter its meaning.

Release the story and the truth will be revealed. Release the past and the present will reveal itself. Embrace the future and walk through your fears. Dig out the weeds and the flowers will blossom. Speak your Truth and your life will become manifest.

The angels that dry our eyes bear the form and the features of all we have said and thought—above all, of what we have done, prior to the hour of misfortune.

The Loser always fall in love with the past, the fool always fall in love with the future and the winner always fall in love with the present.

The links connecting our past to our present are powerful and enduring in the lives of each of us.

The challenge is to draw on the past but not be bound by it" p. 20

The formula for this brand of "historical" writing is to put the public on the inside; to let them feel the palpitations of royal and imperial lovers and to overhear their lispings and cooings. It can be argued that a man has to live somewhere, and that if his own time is so cut up by rapid change that he can't find a cranny big enough to relax in, then he must betake himself to the past. That is certainly one motive in the production of historical romance, from Sir Walter Scott to Thornton Wilder. But mainly this formula works as a means of flattery. The public is not only invited inside but encouraged to believe that there is nothing inside that differs from its own thoughts and feelings. This reassurance is provided by endowing historical figures with the sloppiest possible minds. The great are "humanized" by being trivial. The debunking school began by making the great appear as corrupt, or mean and egotistical. The "humanizers" have merely carried on to make them idiotic. "Democratic" vanity has reached such proportions that it cannot accept as human anything above the level of cretinous confusion of mind of the type popularized by Hemingway's heroes. Just as the new star must be made to appear successful by reason of some freak of fortune, so the great, past or present, must be made to seem so because of the most ordinary qualities, to which fortune adds an unearned trick or idea.

The memory of the pain did not destroy the reality of the pleasure; grief did not obliterate joy.

The past can't now be altered, the future has yet to be lived, and consciously to experience every moment of the present is the only way to gain at least the illusion of immortality.

The past and present are after all so close, almost one, as if time were an artificial teasing out of a material which longs to join, to interpenetrate, and to become heavy and very small like some of those heavenly bodies scientists tell us of.

The origin of illness may be in the past, but the virulent crisis must be dynamically tackled. I believe in attacking the core of the illness, through its present symptoms, quickly, directly. The past is a labyrinth. One does not have to step into it and move step by step through every turn and twist. The past reveals itself instantly, in today’s fever or abscess of the soul.

The past is like a tattoo. Your life changes, but the tattoo is still there to remind you who you were and you forget who you are.

They say the past always catches up with you, sooner or later. I prefer sooner, because by the time later rolls around, the past has picked up a lot of speed.

The whole of China was overshadowed by the injustice of the past.

We are all slaves of the past. It binds us in its gilded cage and we are just not able to come out of it. The worst part is that we give up trying, not able to comprehend that there is a world beyond called "Today".

...this country would always be populated with presences and absences, presences of absences, the living and the dead. The world as it is would always be a reminder of the world that was, and of the world that is to come.

Trecutul e ca un infirm fără mâini și fără picioare,cu ochi șireți,o limbă ascuțită și o memorie bună.

We can honor what lies behind us without being a slave to it,” Kitty said.

When you make it an issue, it does not just become an issue, but it also grows to become a history and a footprint! Don’t just make anything at all an issue, and don’t let anything at all be a footprint! Note these three kinds of histories: the history we remember and regard, the history we do not remember, and the history we remember, but we do not regard! The true meaning of history is in how we remember and give meaning to history!

When your tristful past is often haunting your mind, then you will look less human and more ghost!

you know what her punishment is for tormenting you way back when?" he said. I looked at him. He said, "her punishment is being her,

We lavish more attention onto our past, after its done, than in the making of it. as a result; "What is done" and "Could have been" becomes ruthless killers lurking in the darkness of our consciousness.

We study the past ecological history, with the conscience of the present ecological conditions, the only window to predict the future environmental and climate changes.

Your past must die for your future to live.