Past Quotes - Page 14

• Power is better than revenge. Power is a live thing, by which you reach out to grasp the future. Revenge is a dead thing, reaching out from the past to grasp you.

  Lois McMaster Bujold

  Revenge, Reaching, Reach Out

  Lois McMaster Bujold (2002). “Miles Errant”, p.25, Baen Books

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• Fashion postulates an achrony, a time which does not exist; here the past is shameful and the present is constantly "eaten up" by the Fashion being heralded.

  Roland Barthes

  Fashion, Doe, Shameful

  Roland Barthes (1983). “Systeme de la Mode”, p.128, Univ of California Press

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• Every new Fashion is a refusal to inherit, a subversion against the oppression of the preceding Fashion; Fashion experiences itself as a Right, the natural right of the present over the past.

  Roland Barthes

  Fashion, Oppression, Natural

  Roland Barthes (1983). “Systeme de la Mode”, p.112, Univ of California Press

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• When asked by a grumpily puzzled professor what "rules" he followed, Debussy is said to have retorted, mon plaisir "whatever I please" and he further claimed that more was to be gained by watching the sun rise than by listening to the Pastoral Symphony. Although such remarks were intended to shock, they contain a core of Debussyan verity.

  Claude Debussy

  Symphony, Listening, Sun

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• Christianity has held back any further advances in human consciousness for the past thousand years. And for the past century it's been in direct conflict with its illegitimate offspring, Communism (again with a capital C). Both ask the individual to sacrifice his self-interest to the higher goals of the organization. (Which is okay by me as long as it's voluntary; but as soon as either becomes too big - and takes on that damned capital C - they stop asking for cooperation and start demanding it.)
  Any higher states of human enlightenment have been sacrificed between these two monoliths.

  David Gerrold

  Sacrifice, Self, Years

  "The Man Who Folded Himself". Book by David Gerrold, 1973.

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• To any intelligent being, there is no emotion more important than hope. Individually or collectively, we must hope that the future will be better than the past, that our offspring, and theirs after them, will be a bit closer to an ideal society, whatever our perception of that might be... It is at those times when we feel we are contributing to that ultimate end... we feel true elation.

  R. A. Salvatore

  Intelligent, Perception, Important

  R.A. Salvatore (2009). “Siege of Darkness: The Legend of Drizzt”, p.15, Wizards of the Coast

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• Our most merciless enemy is our past.

  Maxim Gorky

  Enemy, Our Past

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• One day, when all the continents have been buried in ocean, we’ll slowly float past each other in our little boats, hearing our own hearts in each other’s chest, and watch each other like stars we don’t know are dead.

  Zachary Schomburg

  Stars, Ocean, Heart

  "Scary, no scary". Book by Zachary Schomburg, www.believermag.com. 2009.

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• You can't make sense of the present unless a part of you lives in the past.

  Robert Harris

  Make Sense

  Robert Harris (2010). “Archangel”, p.233, Random House

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• There is, however, no advantage in reflections on the past further than may be of service to the present. For the future we must provide by maintaining what the present gives us and redoubling our efforts; it is hereditary to us to win virtue as the fruit of labour, and you must not change the habit, even though you should have a slight advantage in wealth and resources; for it is not right that what was won in want should be lost in plenty.

  Thucydides

  Reflection, Winning, Should Have

  Thucydides, T. E. Wick (1982). “The Peloponnesian War”, McGraw-Hill Companies

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• To live in the past or in the future may be less satisfying than to live in the present, but it can never be as disillusioning.

  R. D. Laing

  May, Live In The Present, Satisfying

  R.D. LAING (1969). “SELF AND OTHERS”

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• I'm not into bands for the sake of being into bands. I've grown past that. There was a time in my life when I was that guy.

  Pete Wentz

  Guy, Band, Sake

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• So in the heart, When, fading slowly down the past, Fond memories depart, And each that leaves it seems the last; Long after all the rest are flown, Returns a solitary tone,— The after-echo of departed years,— And touches all the soul to tears.

  Henry Van Dyke

  Memories, Heart, Echoes

  Henry Van Dyke (1920). “The Poems of Henry Van Dyke”

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• Alas, why does my mind have to walk through the dust of the past every day?

  Sri Chinmoy

  Dust, Mind, Doe

  "Twenty Seven Thousand Aspiration Plants". Poetry series by Sri Chinmoy (#14702, Part 15), 1983.

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• Falling stars are high examples sent To warn, not lure. Gross fancy says they are Substantial meteors; but that is not so. They are the merest phantasies of Night, When she's asleep, and, dimly visited By past effects, she dreams of Lucifer Hurled out of Heaven.

  Alfred Austin

  Dream, Stars, Fall

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• There are magic moments, involving great physical fatigue and intense motor excitement, that produce visions of people known in the past. As I learned later from the delightful little book of the Abbé de Bucquoy, there are also visions of books as yet unwritten.

  Umberto Eco

  Book, Magic Moments, People

  Umberto Eco (1995). “Name of the Rose”, p.15, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• I think we're past the time in history where you have to come out and say, "I'm happy all the time! I'm a joker! I'm a crazy man!" I think people understand that I can turn that switch on but that I'm also a sensitive, normal human being with feelings and I know how to express those too.

  Jim Carrey

  Crazy, Men, Thinking

  Interview with Devin Faracii, www.chud.com. December 20, 2005.

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• The fear of AIDS imposes on an act whose ideal is an experience of pure presentness (and a creation of the future) a relation to the past to be ignored at one's peril. Sex no longer withdraws its partners, if only for a moment, from the social. It cannot be considered just a coupling; it is a chain, a chain of transmission, from the past.

  Susan Sontag

  Sex, Ignored, Moments

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• The Futurists?.... Well, of course, they are already past.

  Ada Leverson

  Wells, Futurist, Courses

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• I see not a step before me as I tread on another year;But I've left the Past in God's keeping,-the FutureHis mercy shall clear;And what looks dark in the distance may brighten as I draw near.

  Mary Gardiner Brainard

  Distance, Dark, Years

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• This is not pessimism but rather casting a cold eye on things. It is only one man's story, and I think that things will go better, but difficulties exist and nothing is served by hiding them under a poetic veil or under a lyricism of the past. I am against slogans.

  Chinua Achebe

  Eye, Men, Thinking

  Chinua Achebe, Bernth Lindfors (1997). “Conversations with Chinua Achebe”, p.8, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• I ask you to forgive me for not fulfilling some hopes of those people who believed that we would be able to jump from the totalitarian past into a bright, rich and civilized future in one go.

  Boris Yeltsin

  People, Forgive Me, Forgiving

  2000 On his retirement. In the Observer, 2 Jan.

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• There is no long interval between the sense of thirst and the trickling of the stream over the parched lip; but ever it is flowing, flowing past us, and the desire is but the opening of the lips to receive the limpid, and life-giving waters. No one ever desired the grace of God, really and truly desired it, but just in proportion as he desired it, he got it; just in proportion as he thirsted, he was satisfied.

  Alexander MacLaren

  Long, Giving, Water

  Alexander MacLaren “MacLaren's Commentary- Expositions of Holy Scripture”, Delmarva Publications, Inc.

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• Ballet is the repetitive training of the body for the purpose of executing steps in traditional fashion. It is tied to and bound by the past. It is a disciplined beauty consciously preserved in the image of the old days in societies that were class-conscious and appreciative of elitist physical expertise.

  Shirley MacLaine

  Fashion, Class, Ballet

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• It might be plausibly maintained, that in almost every one of the leading controversies, past or present, in social philosophy, both sides were in the right in what they affirmed, though wrong in what they denied.

  John Stuart Mill

  Philosophy, Might, Sides

  John Stuart Mill (1864). “Dissertations and Discussions: Political, Philosophical, and Historical”, p.11

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