Quotes About Past

the other and the past coexisted there from the beginning),

Nostalgia or the height of bad faith: when its target is time, it performs a ruthless selection; forgetfulness is its secret and particularly effective weapon, a sharp knife that cuts ever deeper into the layers of memory and invents a past that never existed.

Zapewne, gdyby?my nawet uznali, ?e historia do niczego poza tym nie s?u?y, nale?a?oby na jej plus zapisa? to, ?e jest bardzo zajmuj?ca (...).

Sometimes scientific progress forces us to reevaluate the wisdom of the past. Other times, it reinforces it. The

Je venais de tomber dans mon propre passé. Fort heureusement, je connaissais bien les risques inhérents aux paradoxes temporels, et j'eus le bon réflexe de ne pas m'attarder.

The reason people find it so hard to be happy is that they always see the past better than it was, the present worse than it is, and the future less resolved than it will be.

Warum es den Menschen so schwer fällt, glücklich zu sein? Weil sie die Vergangenheit besser sehen als sie war, die Gegenwart schlechter als sie ist und die Zukunft rosiger als sie sein wird.

The only paradise is paradise lost.

The true paradises are paradises we have lost.

The true paradises are the paradises that we have lost.

When nothing else subsists from the past, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered...the smell and taste of things remain poised a long time, like souls...bearing resiliently, on tiny and almost impalpable drops of their essence, the immense edifice of memory

I felt myself still reliving a past which was no longer anything more than the history of another person;

But, when nothing subsists of an old past, after the death of people, after the destruction of things, alone, frailer but more enduring, more immaterial, more persistent, more faithful, smell and taste still remain for a long time, like souls, remembering, waiting, hoping, on the ruin of all the rest, bearing without giving way, on their almost impalpable droplet, the immense edifice of memory.

Mais, quand d'un passé ancien rien ne subsiste, après la mort des êtres, après la destruction des choses, seules, plus frêles mais plus vivaces, plus immatérielles, plus persistantes, plus fidèles, l'odeur et la saveur restent encore longtemps, comme des âmes, à se rappeler, à attendre, à espérer, sur la ruine de tout le reste, à porter sans fléchir, sur leur gouttelette presque impalpable, l'édifice immense du souvenir.

And so it is with our own past. It is a labour in vain to attempt to recapture it: all the efforts of our intellect must prove futile. The past is hidden somewhere outside the realm, beyond the reach of intellect, in some material object (in the sensation which that material object will give us) of which we have no inkling. And it depends on chance whether or not we come upon this object before we ourselves must die.

Les vrais paradis sont les paradis qu'on a perdus.

I thought nothing at all, but I felt an immense sadness, as when two parts of one's past existence, which have been anchored near to one, and upon which one has perhaps been basing idly from day to day an unacknowledged hope, remove themselves finally, with a joyous flapping of pennants, for unknown destinations, like a pair of ships. As

We remember the truth because it has a name, is rooted in the past, but a makeshift lie is quickly forgotten.

Porque la mejor parte de nuestra memoria está fuera de nosotros, en una brisa húmeda de lluvia, en el olor cerrado de un cuarto o en el perfume de una primera llamarada: allí dondequiera que encontremos esa parte de nosotros mismos de que no dispuso, que desdeñó nuestra inteligencia, esa postrera reserva del pasado, la mejor, la que nos hace llorar una vez más cuando parecía agotado todo el llanto.

As a man with imagination you can enjoy only in regret or in anticipation—that is, in the past or in the future.

But when from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, taste and smell alone, more fragile but more enduring, more unsubstantial, more persistent, more faithful, remain poised a long time, like souls, remembering, waiting, hoping, amid the ruins of all the rest; and bear unflinchingly, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection. And as soon as

That is why the better part of our memories exists outside us, in a blatter of rain, in the smell of an unaired room or of the first crackling brushwood fire in a cold grate: wherever, in short, we happen upon what our mind, having no use for it, had rejected, the last treasure that the past has in store, the richest, that which, when all our flow of tears seems to have dried at the source, can make us weep again.

And so we ought not to fear in love, as in everyday life, the future alone, but even the past, which often comes to life for us only when the future has come and gone - and not only the past which we discover after the event but the past which we have long kept stored within ourselves and suddenly learn how to interpret.

a book is a great cemetery in which, for the most part, the names upon the tombs are effaced.