the-past

Link	Quote	Tags	Author
6c89746	When we think of the past it's the beautiful things we pick out. We want to believe it was all like that.	the-past remembrance	Margaret Atwood
3ff6d10	When you're young, you think everything you do is disposable. You move from now to now, crumpling time up in your hands, tossing it away. You're your own speeding car. You think you can get rid of things, and people too--leave them behind. You don't yet know about the habit they have, of coming back. Time in dreams is frozen. You can never get away from where you've been.	youth the-past	Margaret Atwood
0ec3ccf	You can accept or reject the way you are treated by other people, but until you heal the wounds of your past, you will continue to bleed. You can bandage the bleeding with food, with alcohol, with drugs, with work, with cigarettes, with sex, but eventually, it will all ooze through and stain your life. You must find the strength to open the wounds, stick your hands inside, pull out the core of the pain that is holding you in your past, the memories, and make peace with them	wounds the-past	Iyanla Vanzant
9e42389	Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it.	the-past	Chuck Palahniuk
af76fae	What we, or at any rate what I, refer to confidently as memory--meaning a moment, a scene, a fact that has been subjected to a fixative and thereby rescued from oblivion--is really a form of storytelling that goes on continually in the mind and often changes with the telling. Too many conflicting emotional interests are involved for life ever to be wholly acceptable, and possibly it is the work of the storyteller to rearrange things so that they conform to this end. In any case, in talking about the past we lie with every breath we draw.	the-past revisionism revision	William Maxwell
dff2759	The historical sense involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence	past historical-perspective history-repeating-itself human-perception jared-wheat past-and-future the-past historical presence perception	T.S. Eliot
518b224	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.	hauntings the-past ghosts	Libba Bray
a82befc	It baffles me that people think that obliterating the past will save them from its consequences, as if throwing away the empty cake plate would help you lose weight.	consequenses the-past	Timothy B. Tyson
2455573	Nothing helps a man to reform like thinking of the past with regret.	the-past regret	Fyodor Dostoyevsky
75dc5da	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.	the-past memory	Julian Barnes
e6760b7	The one plentiful herds of magazine writers would continue to be culled - by the Internet, by the recession, by the American public, who would rather watch TV or play video games or electronically inform friends that, like, 'rain sucks!' But there's no app for a bourbon buzz on a warm day in a cool, dark bar. The world will always want a drink.	drinking change bar electronic-software the-public the-recession electronic-revolution bourbon new-age electronics the-future video-games the-internet recession tv alcohol the-past electronic-books americans changes technology sarcasm	Gillian Flynn
f8a91e2	She said once that time is nothing to me but a series of bookmarks that I use to jump back and forth through the text of my life, returning again and again to the events that mark me in the eyes of my more astute colleagues, as bearing all the characteristics of the classic melancholic.	mourning grief depression family friendship professional the-past melancholy reflection regret remember dead sad lost mental-illness	Dennis Lehane
21a2c3e	in these shitty plastic days ...	loss change a-new-era a-new-world electronic-revolution the-good-days-are-gone new-age stuck-in-a-rut life-sucks plastic the-past the-world fake changes destruction human-nature technology	Gillian Flynn
5835789	A long time ago someone told me that a story will tell itself, when it's ready.	the-past	Jodi Picoult
8bcf401	Everything you've done, everything you've seen, everything you've become, remains. You never can go back, only forward, and if you don't bring the whole of yourself with you, you'll never see the sun again,	the-future the-past	Michael Marshall Smith
fbb3d68	Scars have the strange power to remind us that our past is real. The events that cause them can never be forgotten, can they?	the-past	Cormac McCarthy
7827885	Perhaps you need to look back before you can move ahead.	the-past-looking-to-the-future the-past	Alan Brennert
0c0222c	"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..."	social-history the-past	E.P. Thompson
130fcdf	My dear, you never will understand time, will you? You're always trying to be the things you were, instead of the person you are tonight. Why do you save those ticket stubs and theater programs? They'll only hurt you later. Throw them away, my dear.	possessions the-past	Ray Bradbury
6bba714	"Uh, Miss Carlson," I said, standing at her desk after everybody else had gone on to their next class, "somebody told me you went to that guy's funeral the one the highway patrol shot." "Yes," SHe said. "I did." She didn't look like she was mad at me about it. She had real long eyelashes. I bet she was good-looking when she was young. "Was he a relative or something?" That was what I was afraid of. "No. Not even a friend really." She paused, like she was hunting for the right words. Finally she said, "I read a book once that ended with the words 'the incommunicable past' You can only share the past with someone who's shared it with you. So I can't explain to you what Mark was to me, exactly. I knew him a long time ago."	quoting-books the-past	S.E. Hinton
1eadc36	I am not where I need to be, but, thank God, I am not where I used to be.	faith growing healing-abuse healing-the-past healing the-past growth	Joyce Meyer
5ea40e2	It turns out that sharing the past with someone is different from reliving it when you're alone. It feels less like a wound and more like a poultice.	healing the-past	Jodi Picoult
f084d36	It was a wonderful time to be alive, or even dead.	life the-past	Billy Collins
6aa7411	That was your past, Michelle. You can't live in the past. Sure you can, Sean. If you're not too thrilled with your future.	king-maxwell michelle-maxwell sean-king the-future the-past	David Baldacci
4d482bc	"She lay awake for many hours into the night, among her trunks and trinkets. She glanced over at the neat stacks of materials and toys and opera plumes and said, aloud, "Does it really belong to me?" Or was it the elaborate trick of an old lady convincing herself that she had a past? After all, once a time was over, it was done. You were always in the present. She may have been a girl once, but was not now. Her childhood was gone and nothing could fetch it back."	the-present-moment the-past	Ray Bradbury
5d70777	Of course we live in dreams and by dreams, and even in a disciplined spiritual life, in some ways especially there, it is hard to distinguish dream from reality. In ordinary human affairs humble common sense comes to one's aid. For most people common sense moral sense. But you seem to have deliberately excluded this modest source of light. Ask yourself, what really happened between whom all those years ago? You've made it into a story, and stories are false.	story reality the-sea-the-sea iris-murdoch the-past meta memory	Iris Murdoch
f6e6a18	My younger self had come back to shock my older self with what that self had been, or was, or was sometimes capable of being. And only recently I'd been going on about how the witnesses to our lives decrease, and with them our essential corroboration. Now I had some all too unwelcome corroboration of what I was, or had been.	identity former-self the-sense-of-an-ending julian-barnes the-past self	Julian Barnes
da2c460	We can never go back again, that much is certain. The past is still too close to us. The things we have tried to forget and put behind us would stir again,	the-past	Daphne du Maurier
1a1ce50	Back in 'my day'--though I didn't claim ownership of it at the time, still less do I now . . .	the-sense-of-an-ending julian-barnes the-past	Julian Barnes
223e098	Unless we do something about the past, she thought, then it will weigh us down to such an extent that we simply cannot move. Is that what I want?	the-past	Alexander McCall Smith
009d0e7	The reunion, she decided, was an unnecessary and stressful complication to life. We did not need to reheat cold dishes from the past.	letting-to class-reunion the-past	Alexander McCall Smith
9c107d3	I thought--at some level of my being, I actually thought--that I could go back to the beginning and change things. That I could make the blood flow backwards. I had the vanity to imagine--even if I didn't put it more strongly than this--that I could make Veronica like me again, and that it was important to do so.	irrevocable the-sense-of-an-ending julian-barnes the-past	Julian Barnes

When we think of the past it's the beautiful things we pick out. We want to believe it was all like that.

Margaret Atwood

3ff6d10

When you're young, you think everything you do is disposable. You move from now to now, crumpling time up in your hands, tossing it away. You're your own speeding car. You think you can get rid of things, and people too--leave them behind. You don't yet know about the habit they have, of coming back. Time in dreams is frozen. You can never get away from where you've been.

youth the-past

Margaret Atwood

0ec3ccf

You can accept or reject the way you are treated by other people, but until you heal the wounds of your past, you will continue to bleed. You can bandage the bleeding with food, with alcohol, with drugs, with work, with cigarettes, with sex, but eventually, it will all ooze through and stain your life. You must find the strength to open the wounds, stick your hands inside, pull out the core of the pain that is holding you in your past, the memories, and make peace with them

wounds the-past

Iyanla Vanzant

9e42389

Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it.

the-past

Chuck Palahniuk

af76fae

What we, or at any rate what I, refer to confidently as memory--meaning a moment, a scene, a fact that has been subjected to a fixative and thereby rescued from oblivion--is really a form of storytelling that goes on continually in the mind and often changes with the telling. Too many conflicting emotional interests are involved for life ever to be wholly acceptable, and possibly it is the work of the storyteller to rearrange things so that they conform to this end. In any case, in talking about the past we lie with every breath we draw.

the-past revisionism revision

William Maxwell

dff2759

The historical sense involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence

past historical-perspective history-repeating-itself human-perception jared-wheat past-and-future the-past historical presence perception

T.S. Eliot

518b224

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.

hauntings the-past ghosts

Libba Bray

a82befc

It baffles me that people think that obliterating the past will save them from its consequences, as if throwing away the empty cake plate would help you lose weight.

consequenses the-past

Timothy B. Tyson

2455573

Nothing helps a man to reform like thinking of the past with regret.

the-past regret

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

75dc5da

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.

the-past memory

Julian Barnes

e6760b7

The one plentiful herds of magazine writers would continue to be culled - by the Internet, by the recession, by the American public, who would rather watch TV or play video games or electronically inform friends that, like, 'rain sucks!' But there's no app for a bourbon buzz on a warm day in a cool, dark bar. The world will always want a drink.

drinking change bar electronic-software the-public the-recession electronic-revolution bourbon new-age electronics the-future video-games the-internet recession tv alcohol the-past electronic-books americans changes technology sarcasm

Gillian Flynn

f8a91e2

She said once that time is nothing to me but a series of bookmarks that I use to jump back and forth through the text of my life, returning again and again to the events that mark me in the eyes of my more astute colleagues, as bearing all the characteristics of the classic melancholic.

mourning grief depression family friendship professional the-past melancholy reflection regret remember dead sad lost mental-illness

Dennis Lehane

21a2c3e

in these shitty plastic days ...

loss change a-new-era a-new-world electronic-revolution the-good-days-are-gone new-age stuck-in-a-rut life-sucks plastic the-past the-world fake changes destruction human-nature technology

Gillian Flynn

5835789

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

the-past

Jodi Picoult

8bcf401

Everything you've done, everything you've seen, everything you've become, remains. You never can go back, only forward, and if you don't bring the whole of yourself with you, you'll never see the sun again,

the-future the-past

Michael Marshall Smith

fbb3d68

Scars have the strange power to remind us that our past is real. The events that cause them can never be forgotten, can they?

the-past

Cormac McCarthy

7827885

Perhaps you need to look back before you can move ahead.

the-past-looking-to-the-future the-past

Alan Brennert

0c0222c

"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..."

social-history the-past

E.P. Thompson

130fcdf

My dear, you never will understand time, will you? You're always trying to be the things you were, instead of the person you are tonight. Why do you save those ticket stubs and theater programs? They'll only hurt you later. Throw them away, my dear.

possessions the-past

Ray Bradbury

6bba714

"Uh, Miss Carlson," I said, standing at her desk after everybody else had gone on to their next class, "somebody told me you went to that guy's funeral the one the highway patrol shot." "Yes," SHe said. "I did." She didn't look like she was mad at me about it. She had real long eyelashes. I bet she was good-looking when she was young. "Was he a relative or something?" That was what I was afraid of. "No. Not even a friend really." She paused, like she was hunting for the right words. Finally she said, "I read a book once that ended with the words 'the incommunicable past' You can only share the past with someone who's shared it with you. So I can't explain to you what Mark was to me, exactly. I knew him a long time ago."

quoting-books the-past

S.E. Hinton

1eadc36

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

faith growing healing-abuse healing-the-past healing the-past growth

Joyce Meyer

5ea40e2

It turns out that sharing the past with someone is different from reliving it when you're alone. It feels less like a wound and more like a poultice.

healing the-past

Jodi Picoult

f084d36

It was a wonderful time to be alive, or even dead.

life the-past

Billy Collins

6aa7411

That was your past, Michelle. You can't live in the past. Sure you can, Sean. If you're not too thrilled with your future.

king-maxwell michelle-maxwell sean-king the-future the-past

David Baldacci

4d482bc

"She lay awake for many hours into the night, among her trunks and trinkets. She glanced over at the neat stacks of materials and toys and opera plumes and said, aloud, "Does it really belong to me?" Or was it the elaborate trick of an old lady convincing herself that she had a past? After all, once a time was over, it was done. You were always in the present. She may have been a girl once, but was not now. Her childhood was gone and nothing could fetch it back."

the-present-moment the-past

Ray Bradbury

5d70777

Of course we live in dreams and by dreams, and even in a disciplined spiritual life, in some ways especially there, it is hard to distinguish dream from reality. In ordinary human affairs humble common sense comes to one's aid. For most people common sense moral sense. But you seem to have deliberately excluded this modest source of light. Ask yourself, what really happened between whom all those years ago? You've made it into a story, and stories are false.

story reality the-sea-the-sea iris-murdoch the-past meta memory

Iris Murdoch

f6e6a18

My younger self had come back to shock my older self with what that self had been, or was, or was sometimes capable of being. And only recently I'd been going on about how the witnesses to our lives decrease, and with them our essential corroboration. Now I had some all too unwelcome corroboration of what I was, or had been.

identity former-self the-sense-of-an-ending julian-barnes the-past self

Julian Barnes

da2c460

We can never go back again, that much is certain. The past is still too close to us. The things we have tried to forget and put behind us would stir again,

the-past

Daphne du Maurier

1a1ce50

Back in 'my day'--though I didn't claim ownership of it at the time, still less do I now . . .

the-sense-of-an-ending julian-barnes the-past

Julian Barnes

223e098

Unless we do something about the past, she thought, then it will weigh us down to such an extent that we simply cannot move. Is that what I want?

the-past

Alexander McCall Smith

009d0e7

The reunion, she decided, was an unnecessary and stressful complication to life. We did not need to reheat cold dishes from the past.

letting-to class-reunion the-past

Alexander McCall Smith

9c107d3

I thought--at some level of my being, I actually thought--that I could go back to the beginning and change things. That I could make the blood flow backwards. I had the vanity to imagine--even if I didn't put it more strongly than this--that I could make Veronica like me again, and that it was important to do so.

irrevocable the-sense-of-an-ending julian-barnes the-past

Julian Barnes