"I am neither in the past, nor avant-garde. My style follows life."
Past quotes
Past
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Past quotes (page 94 of 526)
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"The jagged mountains were pure blue in the dawn and everywhere birds twittered and the sun when it rose caught the moon in the west so that they lay opposed to each other across the earth, the sun whitehot and the moon a pale replica, as if they were the ends of a common bore beyond whose terminals burned worlds past all reckoning."
"They were watching, out there past men's knowing, where stars are drowning and whales ferry their vast souls through the black and seamless sea."
"I think being able to age gracefully is a very important talent. It is too late for me. The horse is out of the barn... In past generations, people would try to play younger than they really are. My trick is, I don't try to play younger than I really am."
"What necessity is there to dwell on the Past, when the Present is so much surer-the Future so much brighter?"
"This is what I say: I've got good news and bad news. The good news is, you don't have to worry, you can't change the past. The bad news is, you don't have to worry, no matter how hard you try, you can't change the past. The universe just doesn't put up with that. We aren't important enough. No one is. Even in our own lives. We're not strong enough, willful enough, skilled enough in chronodiegetic manipulation to be able to just accidentally change the entire course of anything, even ourselves."
"Worry was my mother's mechanic, her mechanism for engaging with the machinery of living. Worry was an anchor for her, a hook, something to clutch on to in the world. Worry was a box to live inside of, worry a mechanism for evading the present, for re-creating the past, for dealing with the future."
"I think it would be just to say the most essential characteristic of mind is memory, using this word in its broadest sense to include every influence of past experience on present reactions."
"If you say to people that there's less violence today than in the past, they would be stunned to hear that. But it's the truth, even though we have awful things happening in Syria or Sudan."
"As a Christian I have hope not just for this life but for Heaven and the life to come. And many of those people who died this past week are in Heaven right now. And they wouldn't want to come back; it's so glorious and so wonderful. And that's the hope for all of us who put our faith in God. I pray that you will have this hope in your heart."
"If we fail to solve this moral and spiritual crisis we may be doomed like the great nations of the past."
"The past and present are only our means; the future is always our end. Thus we never really live, but only hope to live."
"You should always take the best from the past, leave the worst back there and go forward into the future."
"Since my feet are now fast and point away from the past, I'll bid farewell and be down the line."
"You can not bring back the past. But you certainly can not repeat it. Life is short, even if live to ninety. Live to the fullest - that's how I feel. Appreciate every moment, every hour, every day, because they do not blink of an eye, all over. I am absolutely sure that for most people their death comes as a surprise."
"After doing this work or the past twelve years and watching scarcity ride roughshod over our families, organizations, and communities, I'd say the one thing we have in common is that we're sick of feeling afraid. we want to dare greatly. We're tired of the national conversation centering on "What should we fear" and "Who should we blame?" We all want to be brave."
"The best way to honor past accomplishments is by building on top of their breakthroughs."
"But then people don't read literature in order to understand; they read it because they want to re-live the feelings and sensations which they found exciting in the past. Art can be a lot of things; but in actual practice, most of it is merely the mental equivalent of alcohol and cantharides."
"In my garden I spend my days, in my library I spend my nights. My interests are divided between my geraniums and my books. With the flower I am in the present; with the book I am in the past."
"The only use of a knowledge of the past is to equip us for the present. The present contains all that there is. It is holy ground; for it is the past, and it is the future."