Past Quotes - Page 263

I do not believe that any man can adequately appreciate the world of to-day unless he has some knowledge of -- a little more than a slight knowledge, some feeling for and of -- the history of the world of the past.

Forgive me for speaking frankly, but after the past quarter-hour's conversation, I am unconvinced that any of you possess the sense or sensitivity to impart the news in any respectful fashion" - Amelia

She couldn't "heal" him. No woman could. Events that far in the past just couldn't be undone. But perhaps he didn't need a cure, but . . . a lens. Someone who accepted him for the imperfect person he was, and then helped him to see the world clear. Like spectacles did for her.

Wizard's Seventh Rule Life is the future, not the past.

The German philosopher Walter Benjamin had the curious notion that we could change the past. For most of us, the past is fixed while the future is open.

It's been a long blessed career. I've been riddled with injuries the past two and a half years and haven't been able to quite compete as I'm accustomed to. At this point, I just really want to enjoy it and put it all on the line when I'm out there.

I think the experience over the past thousand years is that ideology is poisonous. . . . The world seen through the lens of ideology is a very limited world.

The problem is everybody is worrying about explosive vests and people with AK-47s. We live in a day and age when someone sitting in Somalia or in Chile or in Perth, Australia, can be sitting there with a laptop and can theoretically take down one of our power grids or part of our infrastructure and do infinitely more damage. Nobody talks about that. It's not a question of who comes into the United States. We're way past that.

I did used to like trampolining, but I’m probably past it, I think. You need to have a really strong pelvic floor to be good at trampolining, and I’ve had three children.

And if you have no past or future which, after all, is all that the present is made of, why then you may as well dispose of the empty shell of present and commit suicide.

Do we always grind through the present, doomed to throw a gold haze of fond retrospect over the past?

I've always been interested in past lives, because they're earmarks of what creates us.

We have either to progress or to degenerate. Our ancestors did great things in the past, but we have to grow into a fuller life and march beyond even their great achievements.

An event in the present evokes past sensations. But science couldn't explain how a foolish heart had the power to overrule common sense.

Everyone who lives in an industrialized society is obliged gradually to give up the past, but in certain countries, such as the United States and Japan, the break with the past has been particularly traumatic.

Photographs are a way of imprisoning reality, understood as recalcitrant, inaccessible; of making it stand still. One can't possess reality, one can possess (and be possessed by) images — as, according to Proust, most ambitious of voluntary prisoners, one can't possess the present but one can possessthe past.

The way you remember the past depends upon your hope for the future.

I dreamed of myself in a dream, and told the dream, which was mine, as if it were another person's of whom I dreamed. Indeed what is life when thinking of the past, but dreaming of a dream dreamt by another who seems to be oneself?

Adrienne Mayor's inquiry into the myth--and surprising reality--of Amazon women begins with the fierce Greek huntress Atalanta, but takes us deep into the past and as far afield as the Great Wall of China. With the restless curiosity and meticulous scholarship that have become her hallmark, the author once again has found a gap in my bookshelf and filled it, admirably.

Every musician, their goal in life is to play music that people love, and I've accomplished my goal. I was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and left that chapter of my life and those people in the past. Good and bad, I've loved and am thankful for that chapter.

I got screwed over in some bad business deals, but as long as I focused on those past problems, I couldn't move forward. I had to let all of that go and forgive everyone and everything first.

Like the kind of voter who has been turned off to [Donald] Trump, who would normally vote Republican in an election like this, that`s who we`re talking about, can they get past - even if he comes to a position that`s more agreeable for them, a tone that`s more agreeable, can they get past the last year?

Every leap forward that I make is by reaching back and firmly getting a footing in the past, and pushing forward as hard as I can.

Contrary to current cynicism about past golden ages, the abstraction known as 'the intelligent layperson' does exist - in the form of millions of folks with a passionate commitment to continuous learning.

Polaroid material has the most beautiful quality - the colors on one side, but then the magic moment in witnessing the image to appear. The time stands still and the act of watching the image develop can be shared with the people around you. In the fast world of today it's nice to slow down for a moment. At the same time Polaroid slows time, it also captures a moment which becomes the past so instantly that the decay of time is even more apparent - it gives the image a certain sentimentality or melancholy.