Quotes About Past

could come to terms with aspects of my past without those terms being set by the Foundation's unexamined Freudian tradition, which pathologized women's experience when it didn't fit the great man's theory.

I think I'd felt that as long as I avoided looking for the tickets, they would be there; it was only if I searched the archive that they'd disappear, as if the past were up until that point indeterminate, that I might outrun it.

The collective effort of repression was tremendous, made the alcohol indispensable. An intense but contentless optimism about the future was the only protection against the recent past, in which all the regimes of value had collapsed, irradiated or gassed.

None of the past was usable.

How many of his small gestures and postures in the present were embodied echoes of the past, repetitions just beneath the threshold of his consciousness? What would happen to the past if you brought those involuntary muscle memories under your control and edited them, edited them out?

journalists (another tribe adept at misremembering the past)

Che strano, Creta evocava i ricordi. Come una macchina del tempo, la sua antichità severa esumava immagini e sentimenti dal passato. Ogni momento sembrava rapportarsi a qualcosa che era successo anni prima.

it can be too easy to forget where you came from.

The writing of histories - as Goethe once noted - is one way of getting rid of the weight of the past.... The writing of history liberates us from history.

We are products of the past and we live immersed in the past, which encompasses us. How can we move towards the new life, how create new activities without getting out of the past and without placing ourselves above it? And how can we place ourselves above the past if we are in it and it is in us? There is no other way out except through thought, which does not break off relations with the past but rises ideally above it and converts it into knowledge.

Un pensatore che non soffra il suo problema e non viva il suo pensiero, non è un pensatore ma un retore, ripetitore di formole che furono pensieri già pensati in passato da altri.

Another circumstance of note was the fact that they never spoke about the past: that particular novel, they both seemed to agree, was over and done with, doubtless because it seemed so improbable and false, rather like the books we were mad about in our youth and which, in our maturity, seem somewhat paltry.

the past wastes no time becoming the past, all right.

Mal Griffin, Sarah, él mismo a los veinte años, y Delia, su futura esposa,

El amor sustituye la falta de recuerdos de un modo casi mágico. Todos los demás afectos necesitan el pasado: el amor crea un pasado como por encantamiento y nos rodea de él. Nos da, por así decirlo, la conciencia de haber vivido durante años con un ser que no hace mucho nos resultaba casi extraño. El amor es sólo un punto luminoso, y sin embargo parece apoderarse del tiempo.

I am captivated more by dreams of the future then history of the past.

To be sure, only a redeemed mankind receives the fullness of its past -- which is to say, only a redeemed mankind has its past become citable in all its moments. Each moment it has lived becomes a citation à l'ordre du jour -- and that day is Judgement Day.

The numbers are things I don't like to reflect on or look back on.

The justice of our cause must be reflected in the manner in which we rectify the crimes of the past.

It is only by reflecting on the past that one can create a better future.

You realize yourself when you start reflecting - because I don't live in the past, although your past is so much a part of what you are - that you can't ignore it. But I don't look at scrapbooks.

While reflecting on past relationships and learning from them can be helpful, February isn't the best time to try and gain insight.

Every film that is made about the past is always a reflection of the present.

It makes the city unique and hold a charm. In old Kolkata, there are some beautiful old buildings... some of them are well-maintained; somewhere reflects what the city has gone through in the past.