“This was the past and it was the dead past; there were only corpses in it—and perhaps not even corpses, but the shadows of those corpses. For the dead trees and the fence posts and the bridges and the buildings on the hill all would classify as shadows. There was no life here; the life was up ahead. Life must occupy but a single point in time, and as time moved forward, life moved with it. And so was gone, thought Blaine, any dream that Man might have ever held of visiting the past and living in the action and the thought and the viewpoint of men who’d long been dust. For the living past did not exist, nor did the human past except in the records of the past. The present was the only valid point for life—life kept moving on, keeping pace with the present, and once it had passed, all traces of it or its existences were carefully erased.”

—  Clifford D. Simak, book Time is the Simplest Thing

Source: Time is the Simplest Thing (1961), Chapter 11 (p. 87)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "This was the past and it was the dead past; there were only corpses in it—and perhaps not even corpses, but the shadows…" by Clifford D. Simak?
Clifford D. Simak photo
Clifford D. Simak137
American writer, journalist 1904–1988

Related quotes

Clifford D. Simak photo

“There were certain basic things, perhaps—the very earth, itself—which existed through every point in time, holding a sort of limited eternity to provide a solid matrix. And the dead—the dead and fabricated—stayed in the past as ghosts. The fence posts and the wire strung on them, the dead trees, the farm buildings, and the bridge were shadows of the present persisting in the past. Persisting, perhaps, reluctantly, because since they had no life they could not move along. They were bound in time and stretched through time and they were long, long shadows.
He was, he realized with a shock, the only living thing existing in this moment on this earth. He and nothing else.”

Clifford D. Simak book Time is the Simplest Thing

Source: Time is the Simplest Thing (1961), Chapter 11 (p. 87)

Thich Nhat Hanh photo

“Some people live as though they are already dead. There are people moving around us who are consumed by their past, terrified of their future, and stuck in their anger and jealousy. They are not alive; they are just walking corpses.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Source: You Are Here: Discovering the Magic of the Present Moment

“They darted down and rose up like a wave
Or buzzed impetuously as before;
One would have thought the corpse was held a slave
To living by the life it bore!”

Allen Tate (1899–1979) American poet, essayist and social commentator

A Carrion, from Poems (1961).

“Today's banalities apparently gain in profundity if one states that the wisdom of the past, for all its virtues, belongs to the past. The arrogance of those who come later preens itself with the notion that the past is dead and gone. … The modern mind can no longer think thought, only can locate it in time and space. The activity of thinking decays to the passivity of classifying.”

Russell Jacoby (1945) American historian

Source: Social Amnesia: A Critique of Conformist Psychology from Adler to Laing (1975), p. 1

Oprah Winfrey photo

“Forgiveness is giving up the hope that the past could have been any different, it's accepting the past for what it was, and using this moment and this time to help yourself move forward.”

Oprah Winfrey (1954) American businesswoman, talk show host, actress, producer, and philanthropist

Osamu Dazai photo

“He could only consider me as the living corpse of a would-be suicide, a person dead to shame, an idiot ghost.”

Osamu Dazai book No Longer Human

Third Notebook: Part Two
Source: No Longer Human

Robert Charles Wilson photo

“The past was gone, the dead were dead and did not speak, and everybody dies; one day Oberg would be dead and silent, too, and that was as it should be: the broad and welcoming ocean of oblivion. It made life bearable. It was sacred. It should not be tampered with.”

Robert Charles Wilson book Memory Wire

Source: Memory Wire (1987), Chapter 20 (p. 179)

“Life is wonderful, so revel in its beauty. Be all you can be, and let go of the past. It is nothing but shadows.”

David Clement-Davies book Fell

Source: Fell

Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo

“The past is the poet's,—that world is his own;
Thence hath his music its truth and its tone.
He calls up the shadows of ages long fled,
And light, as life lovely, illumines the dead.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The Vow of the Peacock (1835)

Brandon Mull photo

“Was life like that? You could look ahead to the future or back to the past, but the present moved too quickly to absorb.”

Brandon Mull (1974) American fiction writer

Related topics