Past Quotes - Page 389

The only important property of evils of the past is that they not be repeated in the future, in any way, shape, or form.

The room shall speak, it must catch me up and hold me, I want to feel that I belong here, I want to hearken and know when I go back to the front line that the war will sink down, be drowned utterly in the great home-coming tide, know that it will then be past for ever, and not gnaw us continually, that it will have none but an outward power over us...Nothing stirs; listless and wretched, like a condemned man, I sit there and the past withdraws itself. And at the same time I fear to importune it too much, because I do not know what might happen then. I am a soldier, I must cling to that.

That's why we feel so disoriented, irritated even, when these touchstones from our past are altered. We don't like it when our hometown changes, even in small ways. It's unsettling. The playground! It used to be right here, I swear. Mess with our hometown, and you're messing with our past, with who we are. Nobody likes that.

We are shaped not only by our current geography but by our ancestral one as well. Americans, for instance, retain a frontier spirit even though the only frontier that remains is that vast open space between the SUV and strip mall. We are our past.

The black arrowed swoop of the moment swung high into the unceilinged future, ten, fifty, sixty years, may be: then, past seeing, up to that warmthless unconsidered mock-time, when nothing shall be left but the memorial that fits all (except, if there be, the most unhappiest) of human kind: I was not, I lived and loved, I am not.

Today, public understanding of our past and our system of government is pitifully low.

The testimony of every scientist is that the frontiers that are opening out ahead of us now are far wider and more spectacular than any frontier of America in the past. Our horizons are not closed. We are going to write a greater development in America than has ever been conceived.

It's a sad indication of where Washington has come, where policy differences almost necessarily become questions of integrity. I came to Washington in the late '70s, and people had the ability in the past to have intense policy differences but didn't feel the need to question the other person's character.

There is no reason to believe that the nature of the violent minorities is now greatly different from what it was in the past. What has changed is the will and ability of the majority to react.

I do write about people who are complex and are striving with something and can't quite get past their own stuff, which would be a proxy for myself because that's what the deal is with me.

For the past eight years, the right has been better at working the refs. Now the left is learning how to play the game.

Ever since Richard Nixon walloped George McGovern in the presidential election of 1972, political pundits have treated as a truism the proposition that liberals are out of step with the rest of the nation, and therefore all but unelectable outside the precincts of the Northeast -- give or take a college town here or a ski resort there. During the course of every presidential election for the past forty years now, Republicans have sought to wield the word liberal as if it were a six-gauge shotgun.

The humans were protecting their heritage, or so they thought. Strange that Mud Men seem more concerned about the past than the present.

The bright days of my youthThey were full of hopeThe great journey that was before me thenWas what was destined to be, bye bye.Now I'm sorrowful,The day is long past.Alas and woe, oh.

You can always veer off the path, that's one thing that has really comforted me over the past year. When you think, 'I can't do something because of this, this and this,' you can actually do anything you want. I could go ballistic right now and tear this whole room apart. I could. I'm not going to, because logic is stopping me, but you can do whatever you want. You really can veer off any path at any time - never give up.

The average mind is slow in grasping a truth, but when the most thoroughly organized, centralized institution, maintained at an excessive national expense, has proven a complete social failure, the dullest must begin to question its right to exist. The time is past when we can be content with our social fabric merely because it is "ordained by divine right," or by the majesty of the law.

I would say at the moment the only person who could have played me this past year would have to be Angelina Jolie.

Sometimes people have a wild past because they have an essentially wild nature, and that's how they plan to go through life. Sometimes such people settle into happy monogamy, and can be content there because they never have to wonder, "What did I miss?"

There are some people who do not have a wild past because being wild would make them terribly self-conscious and uncomfortable.

I couldn't wait to look at someone who shared my genes. I thought my baby was going to provide a decoder key to my past. But then I looked at Pippa and realized, no, she's actually the key to my future.

I think it's a really excellent time to be a woman in music. A lot of the past was women fighting to be where women are now. Every once in a while I'll get the, "Oh, you're a pretty good guitar player for a girl," bullshit like that. But that's all changing.

Even if we no longer have much in common, we would have always had the past, which, in some ways, is just as important as the present or future. It is where we come from, what makes us who we are.

Evident in every small act of kindness, it was love as a verb. Love that made me feel more complete than I had ever felt in my glamorous, Jimmy Choo filled past.

To possess is past the instant; we achieve the joy, immortality contented, were anomaly.

The Things that never can come back, are several- Childhood-some forms of Hope-the Dead- Though Joys-like Men-may sometimes make a Journey- And still abide-.