Quotes about paste page 9

“Oh God, without them [libraries], what have we? We have no past and we have no future.”

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) American writer

Mojave magazine (November 1990)

God, Past, Future

“There's no way you can get the past right. You can pretend. You can delude yourself, but you can't re-create what's over.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Choke

Source: Choke

Way, Past

“The past does not equal the future.”

Anthony Robbins (1960) Author, actor, professional speaker

“I look forward to a great future for America, a future in which our country will match its military strength with our moral restraint, its wealth with our wisdom, its power with our purpose. I look forward to an America which will not be afraid of grace and beauty, which will protect the beauty of our natural environment, which will preserve the great old American houses and squares and parks of our national past, and which will build handsome and balanced cities for our future.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1963, Speech at Amherst College

Wisdom, Beauty, Nature, Past

“Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past, let us accept our own responsibility for the future.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

“No past. No future. Just present. Give it a chance.”

David Levithan book Every Day

Every Day

Chance, Past, Future

“They're already taking my future! They can't have the things that mattered to me in the past!”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Source: The Hunger Games

“I did have regrets these past six months,” he told me quietly. “I found it a curse as much as a blessing, all that time to think. About the things I could have said, that I should have told you . . .”

Karen Chance American writer

Source: Tempt the Stars

Thinking, Time, Past

“So many words get lost. They leave the mouthand lose their courage, wandering aimlessly until they are swept into the gutter like dead leaves. On rainy days you can hear their chorus rushing past.”

Nicole Krauss The History of Love

Source: The History of Love

Courage, Past, Dead

“Let the past be content with itself, for man needs forgetfulness as well as memory”

James Stephens book Irish Fairy Tales

Source: Irish Fairy Tales

Memory, Past, Forgetting

“And if you were always spending your time getting over your past, how were you supposed to get on with your future?”

Candace Bushnell book Trading Up

Source: Trading Up

Time, Past, Future

“Plans let past drives the future.”

Jason Fried software entrepreneur

Rework

“Arguments from authority carry little weight – authorities have made mistakes in the past. They will do so again in the future. Perhaps a better way to say it is that in science there are no authorities; at most, there are experts.”

Carl Sagan book The Demon-Haunted World

Source: The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

Way, Science, Past, Future

“Visit your soul; don't visit your past.”

Paulo Coelho book Aleph

Aleph

Soul, Past

“True friends share everything, except the past before they met.”

Mary Renault book Fire from Heaven

Source: Fire from Heaven

“The past doesn't go away. You just can't see it anymore.”

Paula Morris (1965) New Zealand writer

Source: Ruined

“Every new & successful example therefore of, is of importance. And I have no doubt that every new example, will succeed, as every past one has done, in shewing that.

[]”

James Madison (1751–1836) 4th president of the United States (1809 to 1817)

Source: James Madison: Writings

Success, Past

“The illusion that we understand the past fosters overconfidence in our ability to predict the future.”

Daniel Kahneman book Thinking, Fast and Slow

Source: Thinking, Fast and Slow

Understanding, Past, Future

“The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us, and we see nothing but sand; the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they are gone.”

George Eliot (1819–1880) English novelist, journalist and translator

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 563

Life, Angels, Past

“Then how about one kiss?' he said with a sexy grin. 'Something to remember me by?'

'I’ll give you something to remember me by,' I said. The back of my head.' I pushed past him and escaped through the door to freedom.”

Ellen Schreiber (1967) American writer

Source: The Coffin Club

Kiss, Freedom, Past

“Shoulda, coulda, woulda. It's so easy in the past tense.”

Sarah Dessen book The Truth About Forever

Source: The Truth About Forever

“It makes you a different person, to not have a past. It eats away at who you are, until what’s left is all construct, all artifice.”

Holly Black book Black Heart

Source: Black Heart

Past, Personality

“But you cannot change your past, no matter how you craft your future.”

Mitch Albom (1958) American author

Source: The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto: A Novel

Change, Past, Future

“My past was a private obstacle, not a public excuse.”

Kelley Armstrong book Stolen

Source: Stolen

“The future is a hundred thousand threads, but the past is a fabric that can never be rewoven.”

Orson Scott Card book Xenocide

Source: Xenocide

“Only by acceptance of the past, can you alter it”

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) 20th century English author

“The cloak of the past is cut from patches of feeling, and sewn with rebus threads. Most of the time, the best we can do is wrap it around ourselves for comfort or drag it behind us as we struggle to go on.”

Gregory David Roberts book Shantaram

Source: Shantaram

Feeling, Time, Past

“The past is weird. I mean, does it really exist? It feels like it exists, but where is it? And if it did exists, but doesn’t now, then where did it go?”

Ruth Ozeki book A Tale for the Time Being

Source: A Tale for the Time Being

Feeling, Past

“Remember? Ohh, I wouldn't do that! Remembering's dangerous. I find the past such a worrying, anxious place.

"The past tense", I supposed you'd call it. Ha ha ha.”

Alan Moore book Batman: The Killing Joke

Source: Batman: The Killing Joke

“Life is not a race to restore a past situation. Nor does one have to hurry to meet the future. Seeing how things change is what makes life interesting.”

Robin Hobb (1952) American fiction writer (pseudonym)

Life, Change, Past, Future

“Simon watched a kelpie skip past, carrying a glass of blue fluid, and raised an eyebrow.
“It’s not like Magnus’s party,” Isabelle reassured him. “Everything here ought to be safe to drink.”
“Ought to be?” Aline look worried.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Glass

Source: City of Glass

Drink, Past

“A past may chase you if you try to escape from it… but once you confront it, it's just an old memory inside you. There's nothing to be afraid of.”

Kazuya Minekura (1975) Japanese manga artist

Memory, Past

“Things change, people change, but that doesn't mean you should forget the past.”

Gail Carson Levine (1947) American writer

People, Change, Past, Forgetting

“We go to the past to lay the blame - since the past can't argue. We go to our past selves to account for our present miseries.”

Glen Duncan (1965) British writer

Source: Love Remains

“Only the weak blame their past for the faults they find in their present; the strong acknowledge the effects of their past and then move on from it. We are all free to choose whether we will be weak or strong.”

Penny Jordan (1946–2011) British women's author

Source: The Italian Duke's Virgin Mistress

Strong, Past

“How beautiful life is and how sad! How fleeting, with no past and no future, only a limitless now.”

James Clavell book Shōgun

Source: Shōgun

Life, Sadness, Beauty, Past

“The past attracts me, the present frightens me, because the future is death.”

Guy De Maupassant (1850–1893) French writer

Source: The Complete Short Stories of Guy de Maupassant, Part One

Death, Past, Future

“The past is a source of knowledge, and the future is a source of hope. Love of the past implies faith in the future.”

Stephen E. Ambrose (1936–2002) American historian

Hope, Love, Faith, Hope

“Paris is a place in which we can forget ourselves, reinvent, expunge the dead weight of our past.”

Michael Simkins (1956) British actor

Source: Detour de France: An Englishman in Search of a Continental Education

Past, Dead, Forgetting

“I find now, swallowing one teaspoon
of pain, that it drops downward
to the past where it mixes
with last year’s cupful
and downward into a decade’s quart
and downward into a lifetime’s ocean.
I alternate treading water
and deadman’s float.”

Anne Sexton (1928–1974) poet from the United States

Source: The Complete Poems

Pain, Water, Past

“That it would always be summer and autumn, and you always courting me, and always thinking as much of me as you have done through the past summertime!”

Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) English novelist and poet

Source: Tess of the D'Urbervilles

Autumn, Thinking, Past, Summer

“There was always a minority afraid of something, and a great majority afraid of the dark, afraid of the future, afraid of the past, afraid of the present, afraid of themselves and shadows of themselves”

Ray Bradbury book Fahrenheit 451

Usher II (1950)
The Martian Chronicles (1950)
Source: Fahrenheit 451
Context: They began by controlling books of cartoons and then detective books and, of course, films, one way or another, one group or another, political bias, religious prejudice, union pressures; there was always a minority afraid of something, and a great majority afraid of the dark, afraid of the future, afraid of the past, afraid of the present, afraid of themselves and shadows of themselves.

“I changed it. I had to. Do you know why?" She studied him, her eyes grave. "Because that was then and this is now. Because the past is gone, even though it defines the present.”

Stephen King book Doctor Sleep

Source: Doctor Sleep

Study, Change, Past

“She looked at her own past, and, for the first time, she forgave herself: it hadn't been
her fault, but the fault
of that insecure little boy, who had given up after the first attempt.”

Paulo Coelho book Eleven Minutes

Source: Eleven Minutes

Boy, Time, Past

“We are all what our pasts have made us,” Catarina said. “The accumulation of thousands of daily choices. We can change ourselves, but never erase what we’ve been.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: The Lost Herondale

“He willed his body to remain unaffected. Sabin would fuss if Strider sported a hard-on around his precious. And, of course, "fuss" meant Strider would find his intestines wrapped around his neck, breathing a thing of the past.”

Gena Showalter (1975) American writer

Source: The Darkest Surrender

Sport, Past

“He'd felt like a jack-o-lantern for the past few days, as if his guts had been yanked out with a fork and dumped in a heap while a grinning smile stayed plastered on his face.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Ashes

Source: City of Ashes

Smile, Past

“In every conceivable manner, the family is link to our past, bridge to our future.”

Alex Haley (1921–1992) African American biographer, screenwriter, and novelist

As quoted in Traits of a Healthy Family (1985) by Dolores Curran, p. 199.
Context: The family is our refuge and our springboard; nourished on it, we can advance to new horizons. In every conceivable manner, the family is link to our past, bridge to our future.

Family, Family, Past, Future

“Smiling with pleasure, they went through their memories, not sad, old people's memories, but poetic, youthful ones, those impressions from the very distant past where dream merges with reality, and they laughed softly, rejoicing at something.”

Leo Tolstoy book War and Peace

Source: War and Peace

People, Pleasure, Youth, Sadness

“I past another telkhine, who was so startled he dropped his Lil' Demons lunch box. I left him alive - partly because he had a cool lunch box…”

Rick Riordan (1964) American writer

Past, Box

“I'm going to tell you a secret. Our lives are shaped by the future, not by the past. Once you decide how you want your life to be, all you need to do is live into that future.”

Wendy Mass (1967) American children's writer

Source: Heaven Looks a Lot Like the Mall

Life, Secret, Past, Future

“You can lose your way groping among the shadows of the past.”

Louis-ferdinand Céline book Journey to the End of the Night

Source: Journey to the End of the Night

Way, Past

“Of this I am quite sure, that if we open a quarrel between the past and the present, we shall find that we have lost the future.”

Winston S. Churchill book The Second World War

Speech in the House of Commons, June 18, 1940 "War Situation" http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1940/jun/18/war-situation#column_52. The Second World War (1939–1945)

“Human beings suffer agonies, and their sad fates become legends; poets write verses about them and playwrights compose dramas, and the remembrance of past grief becomes a source of present pleasure - such is the strange alchemy of the spirit.”

Upton Sinclair book Dragon's Teeth

Source: Dragon's Teeth

Fate, Pleasure, Sadness, Suffering

“Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or the present are certain to miss the future.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

Variant: Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.

Motivational, Inspirational, Wise, Deep

“I believe in God--in spite of God! I believe in Mankind--in spite of Mankind! I believe in the Future--in spite of the Past!”

Elie Wiesel (1928–2016) writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Laureate, and Holocaust survivor

God, Past, Future

“Most men's awareness doesn't extend past their dinner plates.”

Scott Westerfeld book Leviathan

Source: Leviathan

Men, Past

“The past is another land, and we cannot go to visit. So, if I say there were dragons, and men who rode upon their backs, who alive has been there and can tell me that I'm wrong?”

Cressida Cowell book How to Be a Pirate

Source: How to Be a Pirate

Men, Past

“I have often had a retrospective vision where everything in my past life seems to fall with significance into logical sequence.”

Ansel Adams (1902–1984) American photographer and environmentalist

Life, Past

“For books are more than books, they are the life
The very heart and core of ages past,
The reason why men lived and worked and died,
The essence and quintessence of their lives.”

Amy Lowell (1874–1925) US writer

Life, Men, Books, Age

“I fell victim to the temptation of every autobiographer, to the illusion that since the past exists only in one's memories and the words which strive vainly to encapsulate them, it is possible to create past events simply by saying they occurred.”

Salman Rushdie book Midnight's Children

Source: Midnight's Children

Memory, Past

“I’d rather welcome change than cling to the past.”

Robert T. Kiyosaki book Rich Dad Poor Dad

Rich Dad Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money-That the Poor and the Middle Class Do Not!
Source: Rich Dad, Poor Dad

“… A scar signifies past pain, a wound that did not heal as it ought. But it testifies, too, to survival…(Here be Dragons)”

Sharon Kay Penman (1945) American historical novelist

Pain, Past

“Attitude is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than what people do or say. It is more important than appearance, giftedness, or skill.”

W.C. Fields (1880–1946) actor

Attitude, Money, People, Education

“And the kittykats would have to erect scaffolding and a pulley to get him down. Mind you, I wouldn't put that past them. Sometimes when they are behind the sofa supposedly purring, I think they are drilling.”

Louise Rennison (1951–2016) British writer

Source: Startled by His Furry Shorts

Thinking, Past

“Without a past you can't have a future.”

Michael Ende book The Neverending Story

Source: The Neverending Story

“It is all falling indelibly into the past.”

Don DeLillo Underworld

Source: Underworld

“There's no present. There's only the immediate future and the recent past.”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

“The Master said, “A true teacher is one who, keeping the past alive, is also able to understand the present.”
(Analects 2.11)”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

Understanding, Teachers, Past

“It's important to know the past, but your survival depends on knowing the present.”

Jonathan Maberry book Dust & Decay

Source: Dust & Decay

Past, Dependency

“What happens in the past, is in the past. But don't be surprised if it comes back and haunts you.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Last Song

Source: The Last Song

“I don't know whether you can look at your past and find, woven like the hidden symbols on a treasure map, the path that will point to your final destination.”

Jodi Picoult book Handle With Care

Source: Handle with Care

“Adina gave a little shriek. "That fish just swam past my leg! Creepy! Where did it go?"

"To your right! Two o'clock! Get it!"

"You are officially the most bloodthirsty vegetarian ever.”

Libba Bray (1964) American teen writer

Source: Beauty Queens

Fish, Past

“Prolong not the past
Invite not the future
Do not alter your innate wakefulness
Fear not appearances
There in nothing more than this”

Ram Dass (1931–2019) American contemporary spiritual teacher and the author of the 1971 book Be Here Now

Fear, Appearance, Past, Future

“The rules of reason build towers that reach past the treetops. The rules of trust build towers that reach past the stars.”

Mary E. Pearson (1955) young-adult fiction writer

Source: The Heart of Betrayal

Star, Past

“What is now in the past was once in the future”

Ramachandra Guha (1958) historian and writer from India

Source: India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy

“It's hard for me, a Jew, to stay in the moment. Without the past, where is the guilt? And without the future, where is the dread? And without guilt and dread, who am I?”

Christopher Moore book Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal

Source: Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal

“One faces the future with one's past.”

Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) American writer

“There are many great authors of the past who have survived centuries of oblivion and neglect, but it is still an open question whether they will be able to survive an entertaining version of what they have to say.”

Hannah Arendt (1906–1975) Jewish-American political theorist

Question, Past

“As all historians know, the past is a great darkness, and filled with echoes.”

Margaret Atwood book The Handmaid's Tale

Historical Notes (p. 311)
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985)
Source: The Handmaid's Tale
Context: As all historians know, the past is a great darkness, and filled with echoes. Voices may reach us from it; but what they say to us is imbued with the obscurity of the matrix out of which they come; and, try as we may, we cannot always decipher them precisely in the clearer light of our own day.

“Let us not despair but act. Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer but the right answer. Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past — let us accept our own responsibility for the future.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

Remarks at "Loyola College Alumni Banquet, Baltimore, Maryland (18 February 1958) http://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Research-Aids/Ready-Reference/JFK-Quotations.aspx; Box 899, Senate Speech Files, John F. Kennedy Papers, Pre-Presidential Papers, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library Pre-1960

Past, Future, Despair

“But Valentine, why despair, why always paint the future in such sombre hues?" Maximilien asked.

"Because, my friend, I judge it by the past.”

Alexandre Dumas book The Count of Monte Cristo

Source: The Count of Monte Cristo

Past, Future, Painting, Despair

“Harry," she said quietly, "I know you must be angry."

I burn things to ash and smash holes in buildings when I'm angry," I said. "I'm a couple of steps past that point right now.”

Jim Butcher book Changes

Source: Changes

“Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Letter to Besso's family (March 1955) following the death of Michele Besso, as quoted in Disturbing the Universe (1979) by Freeman Dyson Ch. 17 "A Distant Mirror", p. 193 Sometimes misquoted as "Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one." 1950s Variant: "He has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. For us believing physicists, the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubborn illusion." Quoted in Einstein: His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson (2008), p. 540 http://books.google.com/books?id=cdxWNE7NY6QC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA540#v=onepage&q&f=false. Variant: "Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That signifies nothing. For us believing physicists, the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion." Quoted in Albert Einstein: The Miracle Mind by Tabatha Yeatts (2007), p. 116 http://books.google.com/books?id=XiyyVYvQBKQC&lpg=PP1&pg=PT114#v=onepage&q&f=false. Variant: "In quitting this strange world he has once again preceded me by a little. That doesn't mean anything. For those of us who believe in physics, this separation between past, present, and future is only an illusion, however tenacious." Quoted in The Structure of Physics by Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker (1985), p. 288 http://books.google.com/books?id=DeexONN0zDgC&lpg=PR2&pg=PA288#v=onepage&q&f=false. Variant: "Now he has departed a little ahead of me from this quaint world. This means nothing. For us faithful physicists, the separation between past, present, and future has only the meaning of an illusion, though a persistent one." Quoted in Einstein and Religion by Max Jammer (2002), p. 161 http://books.google.com/books?id=TnCc1f1C25IC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA161#v=onepage&q&f=false. Variant: "Now he has preceded me by a little bit in his departure from this strange world as well. This means nothing. For those of us who believe in physics, the distinction between past, present, and future is only an illusion, however tenacious this illusion may be." Quoted in Einstein: A Biography by Jürgen Neff (2007), p. 402 http://books.google.com/books?id=B8K6n177ZwcC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA402#v=onepage&q&f=false

People, World, Past, Future

“Funny how internal scars never healed. They were the souvenirs of the past.”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Born of the Night

“without my wounds, who was i? my scars were my face, my past was my life.”

Janet Fitch book White Oleander

Source: White Oleander

Life, Past

“Sometimes when you open the door to the past, what you confront is your destiny.”

Diane Setterfield book The Thirteenth Tale

Source: The Thirteenth Tale

“Interesting people always have a past.”

Jeannette Walls (1960) American writer and journalist

People, Past

“Unless you can change the past, you’re wasting the present on this guilt”

Christopher Moore book Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal

Source: Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal

“I hate how my past actions keep messing up my future options, Seth muttered.
Then you've started down the road to wisdom, Grandpa replied.”

Brandon Mull (1974) American fiction writer

Source: Secrets of the Dragon Sanctuary

Wisdom, Hate, Past, Future

“But life isn’t about learning to forgive those who have hurt you or forgetting your past. It’s about learning to forgive yourself for being human and making mistakes.”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Time Untime

Life, Forgiveness, Learning, Past

“Never be a prisoner of your past. Become the architect of you future. You will never be the same.”

Robin S. Sharma (1965) Canadian self help writer

Variant: We are all here for some special reason. Stop being a prisoner of your past. Become the architect of your future.
Source: The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari: A Fable About Fulfilling Your Dreams Reaching Your Destiny