Past Quotes - Page 201

Еhere's no doubt at all that the Norman conquest led to the hugely concentrated land ownership patterns that we still see in Britain today. Some of Britain's biggest landowners are still direct descendants of Norman barons. And given the impact that Britain has had on the world over the past few hundred years, you could perhaps say this was a global issue. History is always with us.

How is it that we have created an economic system that tells us it is cheaper to destroy the earth and exhaust its people than to nurture them both? Is it rational to have an pricing system which discounts the future and sells off the past? How did we create an economic system that confused capital liquidation with income?

The past is not the present: pretending it is corrupts art and thus both rots the mind and shrivels the imagination and conscience.

Risks are a measure of people. People who won't take them are trying to preserve what they have. People who do take them often end up having more. Some risks have a future, and some people call them wrong. But being right may be like walking backwards proving where you've been. Being wrong isn't in the future, or in the past. Being wrong isn't anywhere but being here. Best place to be, eh?

But the tale or narrative set in the past may have its particular time-free value; and the candid reader will not misunderstand me, will not suppose that I intend any preposterous comparison, when I observe that Homer was farther removed in time from Troy than I am from the Napoleonic wars; yet he spoke to the Greeks for 2,000 years and more.

When you're hurting another person, past a certain point you're cracking them open and whatever's inside them gets all over you. So you should kinda check out whether you want that to happen.

Life is made up of circles ... Life is not a straight line ... And sometimes we circle back to a past time. But we are not the same. We are changed forever.

He stepped back with exaggerated courtesy. But when I walked past him, he swatted my rump. Hard enough to sting. “You need to be more careful,” he growled. “Keep interfering in my business and you might get hurt.” I said sweetly as I continued to Jesse's room, “The last man who swatted me like that is rotting in his grave.” “I have no doubt about it.” His voice was more satisfied then contrite.

Now, the past has plenty to teach us, but I don't think it should be allowed to detain us against our will.

I was getting a little bored with my hair. It's kind of a symbolic thing, just getting rid of the past, moving forward. It's amazing what a reaction you get when you cut your hair.

To me there is no past or future in my art. If a work of art cannot live always in the present it must not be considered at all. The art of the Greeks, of the Egyptians, of the great painters who lived in other times, is not an art of the past; perhaps it is more alive today than it ever was.

Nothing about economic growth in the United States over the course of the past 40, 50 years, during which time this has been continually happening, would indicate that we are being harmed in an overall sense by this.

Oh, God. The Sixties are coming back. Well I've got a 12-gauge double-barreled duck gun chambered for three-inch Magnum shells. And - speaking strictly for this retired hippie and former pinko beatnik - if the Sixties head my way, they won't get past the porch steps. They will be history. Which, for chrissakes, is what they're supposed to be.

In the past a man was expected to give his seat on a bus to a woman. Today it would be much more courteous for that man to give her his job.

The military has been tremendously important in the past during catastrophes and in protecting the population. But it shouldn't become an auxiliary police force.

You are young. No hungry generations tread you down. The past does not mock you with the ruins of a beauty the secret of whose creation you have lost

The past could always be annihilated. Regret, denial, or forgetfulness could do that. But the future was inevitable.

One's past is what one is. It is the only way by which people should be judged.

Any place you love is the world to you”, explained the pensive Catherine Wheel, who had been attached to an old deal box in early life, and prided herself on her broken heart; “but love is not fashionable any more, the poets have killed it. They wrote so much about that nobody believed them, and I am not surprised. True love suffers, and is silent. I remember myself once- But it is no matter now. Romance is a thing of the past.

I think Santa Claus is, by and large, quite beneficial, for when the child is finally allowed -- or forced -- to recognize the nonexistence of Santa Claus, then the child is able to go through the vital intellectual process of reconstructing reality in light of new evidence, complete with back-forming new stories to account for past events. This prepares the child for many other disillusionments and gives her vital and well-supported experience in maintaining her grip on reality independent of the stories told to her at any given time.

Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day.

Every one who has labored honestly in the past has aided to place knowledge and comfort within the reach of a constantly increasing number.

You cannot survive if you do not know the past.

While Resignation gently slopes away, And all his prospects brightening to the last, His heaven commences ere the world be past.

Once you grow past Mommy and Daddy coming running when you're hurt, you're really on your own. You're alone, and there's no one to help you.