Quotes About Past

Pero la ciudad no cuenta su pasado, lo contiene como las líneas de una mano, escrito en las esquinas de las calles, en las rejas de las ventanas, en los pasamanos de las escaleras, en las antenas de los pararrayos, en las astas de las banderas, cada segmento surcado a su vez por arañazos, muescas, incisiones, comas. Italo Calvino. Las ciudades invisibles (Zaira)

En adelante, de aquel pasado suyo verdadero o hipotético, él queda excluido; no puede detenerse; debe continuar hasta otra ciudad donde lo espera otro pasado suyo, o algo que quizás había sido un posible futuro y ahora es el presente de algún otro. Los futuros no realizados son sólo ramas del pasado: ramas secas.

Arrivando a ogni nuova città il viaggiatore ritrova un suo passato che non sapeva più d'avere. [...[ Oramai, da quel suo passato vero o ipotetico, lui è escluso; non può fermarsi; deve proseguire fino a un'altra città dove lo aspetta un altro suo passato, o qualcosa che forse era stato un suo possibile futuro e ora è il presente di qualcun altro. I futuri non realizzati sono solo rami del passato: rami secchi.

La realidad fotografiada asume en seguida un carácter nostálgico, de alegría desaparecida en alas del tiempo, un caracter conmemorativo, aunque sea una foto de anteayer.

I can be sure that even in this tiny, insignificant episode there is implicit everything I have ever experienced, all the past, the multiple past I have tried in vain to leave behind me, the lives that in the end are soldered into an overall life, which continues even in this place from which I have decided I must not move…

I continue to gaze into the valley bottom of the memory. And my fear now is that as soon as a memory forms it immediately takes on the wrong light, mannered, sentimental as war and youth always are, becomes a piece of narrative written in the style of the time, which can't tell us how things really were but only how we thought we saw them, thought we said them. I don't know if I am destroying the past or saving it, the past hidden in that besieged village.

Memory truly counts — for an individual, a society, a culture — only if it holds together the imprint of the past and the plan for the future, if it allows one to do things without forgetting what one wanted to do, and to become without ceasing to be, to be without ceasing to become.

Il passato (proprio per il fatto d'avere un'immagine così compiuta nella quale non si poteva pensare di cambiar nulla come in quel dormitorio) gli pareva una gran trappola. E il futuro, quando ci se ne fa un'immagine (cioè lo si annette al passato), diventava una trappola esso pure.

By now, from that real or hypothetical past of his, he is excluded; he cannot stop; he must go on to another city, where another of his pasts awaits him, or something perhaps that had been a possible future of his and is now someone else's present.

Futures not achieved are only branches of the past: dead branches. "Journeys to relive your past?" was the Khan's question at this point, a question which could also have been formulated: "Journeys to recover your future?" And Marco's answer was: "Elsewhere is a negative mirror. The traveler recognizes the little that is his, discovering the much he has not had and will never have.

For a couple of pages now you have been reading on, and this would be the time to tell you clearly whether this station where I have got off is a station of the past or a station of today; instead the sentences continue to move in vagueness, grayness, a kind of noman's land of experience reduced to the lowest common denominator. Watch out: it is surely a method of involving you gradually, capturing you in the story before you realize it— a trap.

The city, however, does not tell its past, but contains it like the lines of a hand, written in the corners of the streets, the gratings of the windows, the banisters of the steps, the antennae of the lightning rods, the poles of the flags, every segment marked in turn with scratches, indentations, scrolls.

Anche ricordare il male può essere un piacere quando il male è mescolato non dico al bene ma al vario, al mutevole, al movimentato, insomma a quello che posso pure chiamare il bene e che è il piacere di vedere le cose a distanza e di raccontarle come ciò che è passato.

Le donne sono fatte così. Ogni giorno che sorge porta loro una nuova interpretazione del passato. Dev'essere una vita poco monotona la loro.

In a time like that, the past meets you wherever you turn. The days do not use their own hours and minutes, they find ones you have lived through with the person you are missing.

EVEN WHEN IT STANDS VACANT THE PAST IS NEVER EMPTY.

Was there even any way it sounded legal? The past casts a tricky shadow, I was discovering.

Your past constructs your present and future, thereby making you a three-dimensional human being.

Životna snaga jednog ?oveka meri se, pored ostalog, i njegovom sposobnoš?u zaboravljanja.

Rather than recall in these flowers the fragrance of the past, I would like to hear this nightingale's voice, to know if his song is as sweet.

Na die tocht leken zijn herinneringen meer op verzinsels dan op feiten, zei hij en hij was verbitterd omdat de wereld veranderd was en geen rekening met zijn verleden en zijn gemis had gehouden.

One of the ways to grow older without growing old is to become a beneficiary of your past rather than its victim or its prisoner.

For example, if you feel threatened, the mind instantly digs up memories of when you felt endangered in the past, so that you can spot similarities and find a way of escaping.

The past tempts us, the present confuses us, and the future frightens us. And our lives slip away, moment by moment, lost in that vast terrible in-between. But there is still time to seize that one last fragile moment.