Our Past Quotes

1. "It was then that I saw the business of writing for what it truly was and is to me. It is your penance for not being lucky. It is an attempt to reach others and to make them love you. It is your instinctive protest, when you find you have no voice at the world's tribunals, and that no one will speak for you. I would give my entire output of words, past, present and to come, in exchange for easier access to the world, for permission to state "I hurt" or " I hate" or " I want". Or indeed, "Look at me". And I do not go back on this. For once a thing is known it can never be unknown. It can only be forgotten. And writing is the enemy of forgetfulness, or thoughtlessness. For the writer there is no oblivion. Only endless memory."
Author: Anita Brookner

2. "The neural basis for the self, as I see it, resides with the continuous reactivation of at least two sets of representations. One set concerns representations of key events in an individual's autobiography, on the basis of which a notion of identity can be reconstructed repeatedly, by partial activation in topologically organized sensory maps. ... In brief, the endless reactivation of updated images about our identity (a combination of memories of the past and of the planned future) constitutes a sizable part of the state of self as I understand it.The second set of representations underlying the neural self consists of the primordial representations of an individual's body ... Of necessity, this encompasses background body states and emotional states. The collective representation of the body constitute the basis for a "concept" of self, much as a collection of representations of shape, size, color, texture, and taste can constitute the basis for the concept of orange."
Author: Antonio R. Damasio

3. "It's not just the kind of work you do; I wouldn't care, if you were an exhibitionist who's being different as a stunt, as a lark, just to attract attention to himself. It's a smart racket, to oppose the crowd and amuse it and collect admission to the side show. If you did that, I wouldn't worry. But it's not that. You love your work. God help you, you love it! And that's the curse. That's the brand on your forehead for all of them to see. You love it, and they know it, and they know they have you. Do you ever look at the people in the street? Aren't you afraid of them? I am. They move past you and they wear hats and they carry bundles. But that's not the substance of them. The substance of them is hatred for any man who loves his work. That's the only kind they fear."
Author: Ayn Rand

4. "There are such beings as vampires, some of us have evidence that they exist. Even had we not the proof of our own unhappy experience, the teachings and the records of the past give proof enough for sane peoples."
Author: Bram Stoker

5. "In a futile attempt to erase our past, we deprive the community of our healing gift. If we conceal our wounds out of fear and shame, our inner darkness can neither be illuminated nor become a light for others."
Author: Brennan Manning

6. "Only everyone forgets how seldom our memory is accurate. Having more memory is just a way of distorting a greater amount of the past"p.193"
Author: Craig Clevenger

7. "Discover Whether Jesus Is For You Or Your Pastor's Jesus Or Your Friend's Jesus... You Will See A Lot Of Miracles."
Author: Cyc Jouzy

8. "You know the reason The Beatles made it so big?...'I Wanna Hold Your Hand.' First single. Fucking brilliant. Perhaps the most fucking brilliant song ever written. Because they nailed it. That's what everyone wants. Not 24/7 hot wet sex. Not a marriage that lasts a hundred years. Not a Porsche...or a million-dollar crib. No. They wanna hold your hand. They have such a feeling that they can't hide. Every single successful song of the past fifty years can be traced back to 'I Wanna Hold Your Hand.' And every single successful love story has those unbearable and unbearably exciting moments of hand-holding."
Author: David Levithan

9. "We can't afford to deny our past in a bid to be empowered. But what we can do is contextualize the past."
Author: David Oyelowo

10. "Awakenings are always terrifying as they force you to realize your past has been lived in confinement, the most disturbing part is when you recognize that the shackle holding you down are largely once you have placed upon yourself, the prison is self constructed"
Author: Dean Karnazes

11. "Baseball may be our national pastime, but the age-old tradition of taking a swing at Congress is a sport with even deeper historical roots in the American experience. Since the founding of our country, citizens from Ben Franklin to David Letterman have made fun of their elected officials."
Author: Evan Bayh

12. "Thus strategists hesitate over the map, the few pins and lines of coloured chalk, contemplating a change in the pins and lines, a matter of inches, which outside the room, out of sight of the studious officers, may engulf the past, present and future in ruin or life. She was a symbol to herself then, lacking the life of both child and woman; victory and defeat were changes of pin and line; she knew nothing of war."
Author: Evelyn Waugh

13. "Not everything in your past qualifies to be called HISTORY; only the things in the past that shaped your FUTURE"
Author: Fela Durotoye

14. "My mother and I, our favorite part of any baked pasta is the top, where the cheese gets crusty."
Author: Giada De Laurentiis

15. "Be still, and lay aside all thoughts of what you are and what God is; all concepts you have learned about the world; all images you hold about yourself. Empty your mind of everything it thinks is either true or false, or good or bad, of every thought it judges worthy, and all the ideas of which it is ashamed. Hold onto nothing Do not bring with you one thought the past has taught, nor one belief you ever learned before from anything. Forget this world, forget this course, and come with wholly empty hands unto your God."
Author: Helen Shucman

16. "What he sought was always something lying ahead, and even if it was a matter of the past it was a past that changed gradually as he advanced on his journey, because the traveller's past changes according to the route he has followed: not the immediate past, that is, to which each day that goes by adds a day, but the more remote past. Arriving at each new city, the traveller finds again a past of his that he did not know he had: the foreignness of what you no longer are or no longer possess lies in wait for you in foreign, unpossessed places."
Author: Italo Calvino

17. "That was why, later on, he began to lose interest in photography: first when colour took over, then when it became plain that the old magic of light-sensitive emulsions was waning, that to the rising generation the enchantment lay in a techne of images without substance, images that could flash through the ether without residing anywhere, that could be sucked into a machine and emerge from it doctored, untrue. He gave up recording the world in photographs then, and transferred his energies to saving the past."
Author: J.M. Coetzee

18. "Art invites us to become explorers and excavators of our vast internal landscapes, discovering new terrain and digging deep into the past to unearth forgotten experiences and emotion."
Author: Jaeda DeWalt

19. "We've inherited many ideas about writing that emerged in the eighteenth century, especially an interest in literature as both an expression and an exploration of the self. This development ? part of what distinguishes the "modern" from the "early modern" ? has shaped the work of many of our most celebrated authors, whose personal experiences indelibly and visibly mark their writing. It's fair to say that the fiction and poetry of many of the finest writers of the past century or so ? and I'm thinking here of Conrad, Proust, Lawrence, Joyce, Woolf, Kafka, Plath, Ellison, Lowell, Sexton, Roth, and Coetzee, to name but a few ? have been deeply autobiographical. The link between the life and the work is one of the things we're curious about and look for when we pick up the latest book by a favorite author."
Author: James Shapiro

20. "From key signature to coda, from downbeat to the sound of life's final fermata, our pasts set the tone for all that was, that is, and that ever would be."
Author: Jamie A. Hughes

21. "You have a lot to learn, young man. Philosophy. Theology. Literature. Poetry. Drama. History. Archeology. Anthropology. Mythology. Music. These are your tools as much as brush and pigment. You cannot be an artist until you are civilized. You cannot be civilized until you learn. To be civilized is to know where you belong in the continuum of our art and your world. To surmount the past, you must know the past."
Author: John Logan

22. "Take all of your wasted honorEvery little past frustrationTake all of your so-called problems,Better put 'em in quotations"
Author: John Mayer

23. "Our mind becomes more spacious, more open, and happier as we move past our avoidance and denial to see what is true."
Author: Joseph Goldstein

24. "It is not as important how we start (our past), but how we finish."
Author: Joyce Meyer

25. "We should face reality and our past mistakes in an honest, adult way. Boasting of glory does not make glory, and singing in the dark does not dispel fear."
Author: King Hussein

26. "I didn't do it to you, I did it to her. Maybeyour past self thinks it's funny.""She doesn't.""That's not my fault. Besides, I'm not a mindreader. You expect me to realize you'respeaking on behalf of all Lucindas ever, every time you talk.You never said anything about not razzingyour past lives. It's all in good fun. For me, anyway."
Author: Lauren Kate

27. "Have you noticed in your past experience that your kind interpretations were almost always truer than you harsh one?"
Author: Lawrence G. Lovasik

28. "...some evidence seems to exist that an idea prevailed that in the fairy sphere there is a reversal of the seasons, our winter being their summer. Some such belief seems to have been known to Robert Kirk, for he tells us that 'when we have plenty they [the fairies] have scarcity at their homes.' In respect of the Irish fairies they seem to have changed their residences twice a year: in May, when the ancient Irish "flitted" from their winter houses to summer pastures, and in November, when they quitted these temporary quarters."
Author: Lewis Spence

29. "If you haven't said 'I love you' to someone today, do it. You won't always be happy, but you should try to be. Don't be too afraid of germs. Those people have no fun. Remember to look around sometimes. You might see something you haven't seen before or at the very least avoid being hit by a flying object. Speaking of flying objects, don't spend your life looking for extraterrestrial life, unless you work for NASA. Remember that you always have to cooperate with someone. Life is an endless negotiation. Play fair. Stay out of jail. Don't live in the past. Eat breakfast. It really is the most important meal of the day. Try to make new friends, even when you think you're too old to do that. ...And finally, remember this" 'Yes' is always a better work than 'no'. Unless, of course, someone has just asked you to commit a felony."
Author: Lisa Lutz

30. "The life where nothing was ever unexpected. Or inconvenient. Or unusual. The life without colour, pain or past."
Author: Lois Lowry

31. "Magic And Loss (The Summation)"They say no one person can do it allBut you want to in your headBut you can't be Shakespeare and you can't be JoyceSo what is left insteadYou're stuck with yourself and a rage that can hurt youYou have to start at the beginning againAnd just this momentThis wonderful fire started up againWhen you pass through humble, when you pass through sicklyWhen you pass through, I'm better than you allWhen you pass through anger and self deprecationAnd have the strength to acknowledge it allWhen the past makes you laugh and you can savor the magicThat let you survive your own warYou find that that fire is passionAnd there's a door up ahead, not a wall"
Author: Lou Reed

32. "In the whole of your absurd past you discover so much that's absurd, so much deceit and credulity, that it might be a good idea to stop being young this minute, to wait for youth to break away from you and pass you by, to watch it going away, receding in the distance, to see all its vanity, run your hand through the empty space it has left behind, take a last look at it, and then start moving, make sure your youth has really gone, and then calmly, all by yourself, cross to the other side of Time to see what people and things really look like."
Author: Louis Ferdinand Céline

33. "Come on, Seregil, let's show him how it's done.""I'm busy," replied Seregil, working on a tricky bit of fingering.Moving to stand over him, Micum groweled, "Put away that twopenny toy, you tit-sucking coistril, and show me the length of your blade!"Seregil laid his harp aside with a sigh. "Dear me, that sounds rather like a challenge-"Lunging swiftly past Micum, he sprang to his feet and drew his sword, then swung a flat-bladed attack at Micum's forearm."
Author: Lynn Flewelling

34. "Blaming others when you were young for your past may be accurate, but as an adult you are responsible for your future."
Author: Marie Guillaume

35. "But isn't the human factor what connects us so deeply to our past?"
Author: Max Brooks

36. "I can't tell her that our recent troubles have tilted my entire world off its axis. I can't tell her that for the past four months, I've been terrified."
Author: Nina Lane

37. "Experience was of no ethical value. It was merely the name men gave to their mistakes. Moralists had, as a rule, regarded it as a mode of warning, had claimed for it a certain ethical efficacy in the formation of character, had praised it as something that taught us what to follow and showed us what to avoid. But there was no motive power in experience. It was as little of an active cause as conscience itself. All that it really demonstrated was that our future would be the same as our past, and that the sin we had done once, and with loathing, we would do many times, and with joy."
Author: Oscar Wilde

38. "Maybe happiness was an hourglass already running out, the grains tipping, sifting past each other. Maybe it was a state of mind."
Author: Paula McLain

39. "They began by controlling books of cartoons and then detective books and, of course, films, one way or another, one group or another, political bias, religious prejudice, union pressure; there was always a minority afraid of something, and a great majority afraid of the dark, afraid of the future, afraid of the past, afraid of the present, afraid of themselves and shadows of themselves."
Author: Ray Bradbury

40. "Our kids are actually doing what we told them to do when they sit in front of that TV all day or in front of that computer game all day. The society is telling kids unconsciously that nature's in the past. It really doesn't count anymore, that the future is in electronics, and besides, the bogeyman is in the woods."
Author: Richard Louv

41. "Whenever Elliot Norther's wife was nervous she baked. With the murder of Harriet Mason, her husband's close colleague at the Faculty, she had been unable to resist a couple of Victoria sponges. During the frenzied press speculation about the identity of the murderer, a Dundee cake had appeared, followed swiftly by a Battenberg and a Lemon Drizzle. Since news of the Wildencrust murder broke, the kitchen, dining room and study had come to resemble the storerooms of an industrial bakery, every surface heaving with the weight of sponge and cream. Yesterday, having at last been overwhelmed by the fear and rumour that swept the town, she had taken herself off to her mother's house in Hampstead, leaving her husband to soldier on alone. When he had last seen his wife, Elliot Norther noticed that she had been putting the finishing touches to an impressive, triple-tiered wedding cake, beating a batch of royal icing into a sickly paste."
Author: Robert Clear

42. "A revolution without a prior reformation would collapse or become a totalitarian tyranny. A reformation means that masses of our people have reached the point of disillusionment with past ways and values. They don't know what will work but they do know that the prevailing system is self-defeating, frustrating, and hopeless. They won't act for change but won't strongly oppose those who do. The time is then ripe for revolution"
Author: Saul D. Alinsky

43. "By the standards of a tourist strolling past looking for a quick lunch, the place was a dive. The sign on the window was small and easy to miss, and the antique feel of the place wasn't the prepackaged, old-shit-on-the-wall nostalgia that came with so many chain restaurants. The cafe was just old, and everything about it said old. But Jon liked it that way, if only because it kept the tourists away and spared him from hearing imported ignorance when there was plenty of local ignorance to go around."
Author: Scott B. Pruden

44. "Come on-I'll see you back to your room and the estimable Martha."She put her hand in his and let him draw her to her feet."Tomorrow...don't worry," he murmured, as he ushered her back through the darker side of the snug. "I'll be waiting in Carlisle to fall in behind the coach when you go past." Through the dimness he met her eyes. "I won't lose you."Her lips softly curved. "I didn't imagine you would."
Author: Stephanie Laurens

45. "What chance?' she had asked, bewildered.‘Your chance. Your chance to live your own life. Right now you have the look of a woman who is seeing ghosts. Not everybody believes in ghosts, but I do. Do you know what they are, Trisha?'She had shaken her head slowly.‘Men and women who can't get over the past,' Aunt Evvie said. ‘That's what ghosts are. Not them.' She flapped her arm toward the coffin which stood on its bands beside the coincidentally fresh grave. ‘The dead are dead. We bury them, and buried they stay."
Author: Stephen King

46. "Live. How many of us need to be reminded that living has nothing to do with trying to be as good as someone else, or trying to fit into some category, or filling in the blanks on some stupid checklist. That it has nothing to do with punishing yourself for past mistakes."
Author: Suzanne Selfors

47. "She never sent the castle to sleep", said Granny, "that's just and old wife's tale. She just stirred up time a little. It's not as hard as people think, everyone does it all the time. It's like rubber, is time, you can stretch it to suit yourself."Magrat was about to say: That's not right, time is time, every second lasts a second, that's its job. The she recalled weeks that had flown past and afternoons that had lasted forever. Some minutes had lasted hours, some hours had gone past so quickly she hadn't been aware they'd gone past at all."But that's just people's perception, isn't it?""Oh yes", said Granny, "of course it is, it all is, what difference does that make?"
Author: Terry Pratchett

48. "Your mistakes... Should always guide you to a better lifeAnd Not define you to help keep you in the past"
Author: Timothy Pina

49. "Since grief only aggravates your loss, grieve not for what is past."
Author: Walker Percy

50. "Now, tell me, my dear, I said, what are you crying about?About the years that are gone, Mr. Betteredge," says Rosanna quietly. My past life still comes back to me sometimes.Come, come, my girl, I said, your past life is all sponged out. Why can't you forget it?"She took me by one of the lappets of my coat. I am a slovenly old man, and a good deal of my meat and drink gets splashed about on my clothes. Sometimes one of the women, and sometimes another, cleans me of my grease. The day before, Roseanna had taken out a spot for me on the lappet of my coat, with a new composition, warranted to remove anything. The grease was gone, but there was a little dull place left on the nap of the cloth where the grease had been. The girl pointed to that place, and shook here head.The stain is taken off, she said. But the place shows, Mr. Betteredge--the place shows!"
Author: Wilkie Collins

Our Past Quotes Pictures