Past Quotes - Page 252

Great wrongs have been done you, but the past is dust. The future may yet be won.

Perhaps a lunatic was simply a minority of one. At one time it had been a sign of madness to believe that the Earth goes round the Sun; today, to believe the past is inalterable. He might be alone in holding that belief, and if alone, then a lunatic. But the thought of being a lunatic did not greatly trouble him; the horror was that he might also be wrong.

The clock struck half past two. In the little office at the back of Mr. McKechnie's bookshop, Gordon--Gordon Comstock, last member of the Comstock family, aged twenty-nine and rather moth-eaten already--lounged across the table, pushing a fourpenny packet of Player's Weights open and shut with his thumb.

It was part of war; men died, more would die, that was past, and what mattered now was the business in hand; those who lived would get on with it. Whatever sorrow was felt, there was no point in talking or brooding about it, much less in making, for form's sake, a parade of it. Better and healthier to forget it, and look to tomorrow.The celebrated British stiff upper lip, the resolve to conceal emotion which is not only embarrassing and useless, but harmful, is just plain commons sense

It's being here now that's important. There's no past and there's no future. All there is ever, is the now.

Life would be no better than candlelight tinsel and daylight rubbish if our spirits were not touched by what has been.

Forget the past - the future will give you plenty to worry about.

In the past, we've always come up with new jobs for humans to do and so it's always benefitted us, technological progress, but now we're not really creating enough new jobs to replace the jobs that are being automated.

There is no right way to live. You preclude a lot of life by trying to conform to that kind of ideal or stereotype. And it's a natural inclination in a world where it's so complex and so occasionally valueless, morally bankrupt, and chaotic that we want to reach back to something in our past.

So many dictators trying to blackmail the free world because they have no way to compete on ideas, innovation or creativity. The Cold War was two competing visions of the future. I was always anti-communist but it was an idea at least, an alternative idea. We do not have a competing vision for the future because the ideals of these dictators are in the past. They are time travellers. They need confrontation and destruction to survive. The problem is, many people in the free world are sympathetic to Vladimir Putin.

Young people, especially young men due to culture and perhaps testosterone, dream about changing the world, making an impact, doing big things. Now our young people are told life was better in the past, that we should be less ambitious and hold on to what we have. The grand narratives of exploration and change that drove the world forward for a century have been tamed.

Past persons of Scottishness in contact with mastermind of supernatural persuasion in London, aka Agent Doom.’ Floote moved on to the third bit of paper. “ ‘Lady K says Agent Doom assisted depraved Plan of Action. May have all been his idea.’ Moving on to the last one, he read out, "Summer permits Scots to expose more knee than lady of refinement should have to withstand. Hairmuffs much admired. Yours etc., Puff Bonnet.

It was the last that remained of a past whose annihilation had not taken place because it was still in a process of annihilation, consuming itself from within, ending at every moment but never ending its ending.

I have had much experience with the unclean and uncivilized in the recent past. Shall I tell you what I discovered? I am not the state of my feet. I am not the dirt on my hands or the hygiene of my private parts. If I were these things, I would not have been at liberty to pray at any time since my arrest. But I did pray, because I am not these things. In the end, I am not even myself. I am a string of bones speaking the word God.

I love him who justifieth the future ones, and redeemeth the past ones: for he is willing to succumb through the present ones.

All the records of your past lives are contained within your own mind, just as the records of your ancestors are contained within your DNA.

Buddhists believe that you are who you are today is because of who you have been in all your past lives.

People who walk across dark bridges, past saints, with dim, small lights. Clouds which move across gray skies past churches with towers darkened in the dusk. One who leans against granite railing gazing into the evening waters, His hands resting on old stones.

Indeed, this is an important characteristic of the globalization debate: the tendency toward glorifying all things indigenous even when they deserve to be left in the past.

It takes a long time to bring the past up to the present.

A friend of mine jokes that I have a painstaking royalty complex. Like maybe I was a duke in a past life.

Sit and quiet yourself. Luxuriate in a certain memory and the details will come. Let the images flow. You'll be amazed at what will come out on paper. I'm still learning what it is about the past that I want to write. I don't worry about it. It will emerge. It will insist on being told.

The only past which endures lies wordlessly within you.

The past is no farther away than your pillow.

Atrocity never balances or rectifies the past. Atrocity merely arms the future for more atrocity.