“When we are young… we often experience things in the present with a nostalgia-in-advance, but we seldom guess what we will truly prize years from now.”

—  Edmund White

Source: City Boy: My Life in New York in the 1960s and 70s

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "When we are young… we often experience things in the present with a nostalgia-in-advance, but we seldom guess what we w…" by Edmund White?
Edmund White photo
Edmund White 28
American novelist and LGBT essayist 1940

Related quotes

Richard Feynman photo

“In general, we look for a new law by the following process: First we guess it. Then we – now don't laugh, that's really true. Then we compute the consequences of the guess to see what, if this is right, if this law that we guessed is right, to see what it would imply. And then we compare the computation results to nature, or we say compare to experiment or experience, compare it directly with observations to see if it works. If it disagrees with experiment, it's wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science. It doesn't make any difference how beautiful your guess is, it doesn't make any difference how smart you are, who made the guess, or what his name is. If it disagrees with experiment, it's wrong. That's all there is to it.”

Richard Feynman book The Character of Physical Law

same passage in transcript: video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2NnquxdWFk&t=16m46s
The Character of Physical Law (1965)
Variant: In general we look for a new law by the following process. First we guess it. Then we compute the consequences of the guess to see what would be implied if this law that we guessed is right. Then we compare the result of the computation to nature, with experiment or experience, compare it directly with observation, to see if it works. If it disagrees with experiment it is wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science. It does not make any difference how beautiful your guess is. It does not make any difference how smart you are, who made the guess, or what his name is – if it disagrees with experiment it is wrong. That is all there is to it.

Colum McCann photo

“We seldom know what we're hearing when we hear something for the first time, but one thing is certain: we hear it as we will never hear it again. We return to the moment to experience it, I suppose, but we can never really find it, only its memory, the faintest imprint of what it really was, what it meant.”

Colum McCann book Let the Great World Spin

Let the Great World Spin (2009), Book One: All Respects to Heaven, I Like it Here

Frederik Pohl photo

“What will come of these things? That is a fair question. Unfortunately there is no answer. Not yet. If we knew the answer in advance, we would not have to perform the experiment.”

Frederik Pohl (1919–2013) American science fiction writer and editor

The Gold at the Starbow’s End (p. 349)
Platinum Pohl (2005)

Carson McCullers photo

“We are torn between nostalgia for the familiar and an urge for the foreign and strange. As often as not, we are homesick most for the places we have never known.”

Carson McCullers book The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

Variant: The emotion is Janus-faced: we are torn between a nostalgia for the familiar and an urge for the foreign and strange. As often as not, we are homesick most for the places we have never known.
Source: The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

William Kingdon Clifford photo

“We may believe what goes beyond our experience, only when it is inferred from that experience by the assumption that what we do not know is like what we know.”

William Kingdon Clifford (1845–1879) English mathematician and philosopher

The Ethics of Belief (1877), The Limits Of Inference
Context: p>We may believe what goes beyond our experience, only when it is inferred from that experience by the assumption that what we do not know is like what we know. We may believe the statement of another person, when there is reasonable ground for supposing that he knows the matter of which he speaks, and that he is speaking the truth so far as he knows it.It is wrong in all cases to believe on insufficient evidence; and where it is presumption to doubt and to investigate, there it is worse than presumption to believe.</p

Aeschylus photo

“When we know clearly, then should we discuss:
To guess is one thing, and to know another.”

Aeschylus Agamemnon

Source: Oresteia (458 BC), Agamemnon, lines 1368–1369 (tr. E. H. Plumptre)

John Cleese photo

“Six hundred years ago we would have been burned for this. Now, what I'm suggesting is that we've advanced.”

John Cleese (1939) actor from England

Defending the film Life of Brian on BBC chat show Friday Night Saturday Morning (9 November 1979)

Thich Nhat Hanh photo

“If we are not fully ourselves, truly in the present moment, we miss everything.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Source: Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life

Mao Zedong photo

“There are a lot of things we can learn from the Soviet Union. Naturally, we should learn from its advanced and not its backward experience. The slogan we have advocated all along is to draw on the advanced Soviet experience. Who told you to pick up its backward experience? Some people are so undiscriminating that they say a Russian fart is fragrant. That too is subjectivism. The Russians themselves say it stinks. Therefore, we should be analytical.”

Mao Zedong (1893–1976) Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China

Strengthen Party Unity and Carry Forward Party Traditions http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-5/mswv5_53.htm (30 August 1956)

Peter Matthiessen photo

“When we are mired in the relative world, never lifting our gaze to the mystery, our life is stunted, incomplete; we are filled with yearning for that paradise that is lost when, as young children, we replace it with words and ideas and abstractions — such as merit, such as past, present, and future — our direct, spontaneous experience of the thing itself, in the beauty and precision of this present moment. We identify, label, and interpret our surroundings as abstract concepts, quite separate from another concept, which is our own separate identity and ego.”

Peter Matthiessen (1927–2014) American novelist

Nine-Headed Dragon River: Zen Journals 1969-1982 (1986)

Related topics