Our relationship to the past is marked by deep indifference, even if we do say something to the contrary, even if we mean what we say when we say it is a matter of the greatest significance. Because it is a matter of the greatest significance, yet ne...
I have sent books and music there, and all / Those instruments with which high spirits call / The future from its cradle, and the past / Out of its grave, and make the present last / In thoughts and joys which sleep, but cannot die, / Folded within t...
For women, marriages foreclosed often resulted in an accumulation of booty; for men, these failed projects of implausible optimism were more likely to manifest themselves in material lack. It was hard to resist the metaphorical impression that women ...
The sun was already long past the spire when Garrick purchased a mug of coffee from his regular man on the tip of Oxford Street. But his palate had been educated by 21st century coffee, and he judged this mug as bilge water not fit for the Irish.
The older I got the more I appreciated the role of travel as a stimulus to memories, and the way in which journeys even to new places were somehow always awakening memories of places seen in an ever-receding past.
Our mind takes an inventory of past events and uses them to project the probability of success in the future. Depending on the information it gathers, we either move forward—or the fear response is triggered and forward progress is circumvented. Pa...
Palaeontology is the Aladdin's lamp of the most deserted and lifeless regions of the earth; it touches the rocks and there spring forth in orderly succession the monarchs of the past and the ancient river streams and savannahs wherein they flourished...
If you remember your past too well you start blaming your present for it. Look what they did to me, that's what caused me to be like this, it's not my fault. Permit me to correct you: it probably is your fault. And kindly spare me the details.
Past humanity is not only implicit in each new man born but is contained in him. Humanity is an ever-widening spiral and life is the beam that plays briefly on each succeeding ring. All humanity from its beginning to its end is already present but th...
To win the big stakes in this changed world, you must catch the spirit of the great pioneers of the past, whose dreams have given to civilization all that it has of value, the spirit that serves as the life-blood of our own country – your opportuni...
And the past held only this wisdom: that love was a damaging mistake, and its accomplice, hope, a treacherous illusion. And whenever those twin poisonous flowers began to sprout in the parched land of that field, Mariam uprooted them. She uprooted th...
We don’t escape our pasts, you know,” Madd said. He sounded defeated. “Never. We can never escape what we are.” “Maybe not. But I think we can escape what other people try to make of us. We can decide our fate for ourselves.
A photograph is a universe of dots. The grain, the halide, the little silver things clumped in the emulsion. Once you get inside a dot, you gain access to hidden information, you slide into the smallest event. This is what technology does. It peels b...
Xavier stares past her with watery eyes. 'Why does the world feel the need to drop its weight upon my shoulders?' he barely whispers. His mother strokes his hair. 'Maybe it believes you can handle it,' she tells him. 'That though it is heavy, you are...
That's all anyone has, and it's always brief, although, of course, some people believe they have a past where they can accumulate things and a future where they will accumulate still more. By the way, speaking of the present moment, do you masturbate...
Many had suspected that the political disasters of the past few years had a hidden cause. The bloodiness of the French mob rule was something unnatural, with a pitiless and inhuman progression that had never been seen before.
I guess I had always sort of fantasized that a guy would see me and get past the ponytail and the glasses and the giant sweatshirt to discover how insanely awesome I am, then come and whisk me off into that magical teenager fairytale where everyone e...
so are you going to marry me or what?" He smiled that smile that had been making me feel something like drunk these past few months, and I felt all my sensibility and reason start to beat their wings as they prepared to fly away. Again.
Whether I resolve to fire, earth, water, air, Or all the elements by scruples, I know not, Nor greatly care. - Shoot. Shoot! Of all deaths, the violent death is best; For from ourselves it steals ourselves so fast, The pain, once apprehended, is quit...
I still wanted to go home, but had to enter the tunnel and pray for the best. Every day, I discovered more disadvantages to being a strong woman, although the past week made me feel like Hercules in a burkha. -Grace Madison, PhD
Today is felt to be the most complicated day in our lives and rarely in trying to deal with the issues of today, are we aware of the impact of the past on those issues.
