Past Quotes
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The modern world is one wherein every nation has to develop the strength of which its citizens are capable. The independent status of the individual, his thoughts and actions become a thing of the past.
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Everything is in constant flux on this earth. Nothing keeps the same unchanging shape, and our affections, being attached to things outside us, necessarily change and pass away as they do. Always out ahead of us or lagging behind, they recall a past which is gone or anticipate a future which may never come into being; there is nothing solid there for the heart to attach itself to. Thus our earthly joys are almost without exception the creatures of a moment.
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For what are we but our past? If that is lost, we become nothing.
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I look at the past and I see myself.
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Asking presidential candidates whether they support or would change past foreign policy decisions is the most common line of questioning among members of the media. It's also the most pointless.
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When reading a book, be very certain that you never go past a word you do not fully understand. The only reason a person gives up a study or becomes confused or unable to learn is because he or she has gone past a word that was not understood.
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The past will always affect me, and I will keep that in mind while remembering that how it played out is only my starting point, not my final destination.
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The English have always been greedy for news of times past, with that mixture of fatalism and melancholy which is part of the national character.
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If you read enough biography and history, you learn how people have dealt successfully or unsuccessfully with similar situations or patterns in the past. It doesn't give you a template of answers, but it does help you refine the questions you have to ask yourself.
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At some point in the past, this person was (arguably) your best friend.
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The further left one goes, the more negative the assessment of today's America and the America of the past.
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As we become more mature we will learn to master the interplay between the past and the present and not be so self-conscious of our rejection or acceptance of tradition. We will not make the mistake that both rigid modernists and conservatives make, of confusing the quality of form with the specific forms themselves.
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When I think of competition it's like I try to create against the past. I think about Michelangelo and Picasso, you know, the pyramids.
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We are all affected by our pasts, but it is within our power not to let what we have done to dictate what we will do.
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You're after something - not a story, but a certain, exquisitely intense encounter with beauty - and the only way to find it is to tiptoe past the dragon's cave.
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When I re-read my past work I can see a development to such an effect, indeed, that some of them no longer seem to be any part of me.
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Denial exists because human infants, though equipped with trust-o-meters, are built to trust, blindly and absolutely, any older person who wanders past.
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I've been lucky over the past few years. Things have just happened for me.
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I do like to write about characters who aren't just starting out, who have had adventures before, who have had a past they aren't that happy looking back on.
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[My characters are] conglomerations of past and present stages of civilization, bits from books and newspapers, scraps of humanity, rags and tatters of fine clothing, patched together as is the human soul.
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Proust writes, he remembers, physically. He depends on his body to give him the information that will bring him to the past. His book is called 'In Search of Lost Time,' and he does it through the senses. He does it through smell. He does it through feeling. He does it through texture. It is all physically driven, that language.
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I have taken a break from the media spotlight for the past few years.
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Live neither in the past nor in the future, but let each day absorb all your interest, energy and enthusiasm. The best preparation for tomorrow is to live today superbly well.
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The past has always been the handmaid of authority.
