Looking At The Past Quotes

But now, the final feeling ... is one of gratitude that the journey was undertaken. Looking at the past has meant, for the first time, being able to let it go. ~ Ruth Cracknell

The nighttime sky is all about yesterday. The light that you're seeing from the stars happened millions of years ago. Looking at the night sky is like looking at the past. But the morning sky, on the other hand, is right now. It is in the present and holds the hope of a brand new day and so many new opportunities-- to live, to be happy. ~ Robin Schwarz

So stop looking at the past and all the things you can't change. They're done and over with. Now is the time for you to look to the future, grasp it by the hand, and decide where you want to go. I told you once before, and I'll say it again - this is your life, Chase. Only you can decide what it's going to be like. Don't let outside forces dictate it for you. ~ Lacey Weatherford

That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach. ~ Aldous Huxley

Sometimes it takes looking at the past to really be able to move forward and learn from it. ~ Danica Patrick

Most people tend to excuse themselves with the opportunities they have in life, with how many years of school they have, with the people around them. And in doing so, they fail in realizing many other things, such as the fact that not many are lucky enough to give birth to a world bestseller on spirituality, wealth and success in life. Yes, your child may be a little reincarnation of an awesome buddhist monk, of an alchemist or a famous knight templar. Why most people can't see these things, and keep looking at the past for answers, is something that still puzzles me. ~ Robin Sacredfire

Looking at the past must only be a means of understanding more clearly what and who they are so that they can more wisely build the future. ~ Paulo Freire

Looking at the past can be painful, but you can either run from it, numb it, or learn frome it. ~ Mia Sheridan

I'll never stop dreaming that one day we can be a real family, together, all of us laughing and talking, loving and understanding, not looking at the past but only to the future. ~ LaToya Jackson

Personally, I find looking at all of the supporting materials and bring it all back to me - the people I worked with, the experience of working on a project - makes it come alive again. So, I try to put those experiences into my commentary for the viewers. ~ Michael Mann

I think women gather up into themselves what they have been through much more than we (men) do. To them, what is past becomes a real part of them, as much a part of them as a limb; to us it's always something external, at the best the rung of a ladder, at the worst a weight on the heel. ~ A.E.W. Mason

You going to wear black for that funeral?" he asked, looking down at the continent-sized bruise on my arm.
"What are you talking about? Whose funeral?"
"That of your soon-to-be-deceased ex."
"What!? Are you crazy?" I squeaked.
"Well, I suppose black isn't your color of choice, but people will talk if you go there dressed in shocking pink, you know... ~ Zoya Tessi

What are you doing? he gasped. He looked slightly ridiculous. It was not as if he was a defenseless damsel in distress. He could have stopped me, if he wanted to. But he didn't want to. Besides, I've always considered this to be the most idiotic question in the world. I'm pulling off your pants to have a good look at your dick and your ass, is the obvious answer. Looking being only the first step, by the way. ~ Boris Brannigan

I-I'm not making advances," she told him as she flattened herself against his chest. "You're just an available s-source of heat." "So you say," St. Vincent replied lazily, tucking the quilt more tightly around them both. "However, during the past quarter hour you've been fondling parts of my anatomy that no one's ever dared to touch before." "I v-very much doubt that." She burrowed even further into the depths of his coat, and added in a muffled voice, "You've probably been h-handled more than a hamper at Fortnum and Mason. ~ Lisa Kleypas

I had thought about forgiveness more and more ... I knew it wasn't a light that could be switched on in an instant-it grew day by day, week by week, month by month-but something was changing inside me now during the hours when I sat alone and tried to calm my feelings. A seed had been sown, and I sensed that, just as I'd once faced a choice about whether to use violence on the night when I stared at the gun, I know had another choice: to remain trapped in the bitterness of the past or to find peace in the present. ~ Emmanuel Jal

Presently Jack Pumpkinhead became uneasy.

"I wonder if riding through the air is liable to spoil pumpkins," he said.

"Not unless you carelessly drop your head over the side," answered the Woggle-Bug. "In that event your head would no longer be a pumpkin, for it would become a squash."

"Have I not asked you to restrain these unfeeling jokes?" demanded Tip, looking at the Woggle-Bug with a severe expression.

"You have; and I've restrained a good many of them," replied the insect. "But there are opportunities for so many excellent puns in our language that, to an educated person like myself, the temptation to express them is almost irresistible. ~ L. Frank Baum

It is the thing that keeps me up at night - the notion that you have individuals in the United States who are looking at computer screens and who are becoming radicalized. ~ Eric Holder

I don't have a girlfriend. No, I don't. I haven't had a relationship in years, actually. But yeah, I'm still looking. It's kind of nice to be looking for a home at the same time. ~ Jens Lekman

So Rhun had arrived at the last frontier of belief, and fallen, or emerged, or soared into the region where the soul realises that pain is of no account, that to be within the secret of God is more than well being, and past the power of the tongue to utter. To embrace the decree of pain is to translate it, to shed it like a rain of blessing on others who have not yet understood. ~ Ellis Peters

Though Sebastian wasn't looking at her, he could hear the note of childish defiance in her voice, and it caused a wrench in his heart... a heart that he always believed to be nothing more than an efficient muscle. ~ Lisa Kleypas

I was only then, when I knew I was alone, at least for the moment, that I reached under my gown into the pocket of my dress. As I pulled out my key from the yellow house, which I'd kept on my bureau since the day Nate left, I traced the shape one last time before folding my hand tightly around it.
Behind me, Cora was calling again. My family was waiting. Looking down at the pond, all I could think was that it is an incredible thing, how a whole world can rise from what seems like nothing at all. I stepped closer to the edge, keeping my eyes on my reflection as I dropped the key into the water, where it landed with a splash. At first, the fish darted away, but as it began to sink they circled back, gathering around. Together, they followed it down, down until it was gone.<3 ~ Sarah Dessen

Then, slowly, my feet settled to the ground. Before I had taken six steps I sagged like a sail when the wind fades. As I walked back through the town, past sleeping houses and dark inns, my mood swung from elation to doubt in the space of three brief breaths.
I had ruined everything. All the things I had said, things that seemed so clever at the time, were in fact the worst things a fool could say. Even now she was inside, breathing a sigh of relief to finally be rid of me.
But she had smiled. Had laughed.
She hadn't remembered our first meeting on the road from Tarbean. I couldn't have made that much of an impression on her.
'Steal me,' she had said.
I should have been bolder and kissed her at the end. I should have been more cautious. I had talked too much. I had said too little. ~ Patrick Rothfuss

I do not want a plain box, I want a sarcophagus With tigery stripes, and a face on it Round as the moon, to stare up. I want to be looking at them when they come Picking among the dumb minerals, the roots. I see them already-the pale, star-distance faces. Now they are nothing, they are not even babies. I imagine them without fathers or mothers, like the first gods. They will wonder if I was important. ~ Sylvia Plath

Our experience of any painting is always the latest line in a long conversation we've been having with painting. There's no way of looking at art as though you hadn't seen art before. ~ Brian Eno

At the times in my life when I was feeling the most gregarious and looking for bosom friendships, I couldn't find any takers, so that exactly when I was alone was when I felt the most like not being alone ... I became a loner in my own mind ... I decided I'd rather be alone. ~ Andy Warhol

Under Polly's eyes, her gaunt cheeks, and her shaking hands as she poured the tea. * * * Cat watches as her cab winds its way through the streets of Soho, thinking she would never stoop to that. It's the lowest of the low. We're supposed to be features writers, not news hacks. But behind her mutterings, behind her disdain, as unwilling as she is to admit it, lies a ribbon of insecurity. The Daily Gazette is the best paper she could ever imagine working for, but Cat, just past her mid-twenties, has yet to prove herself with a big story. She's proving adept at the smaller fluff pieces - How to wear a scarf in thirty different ways! How to put the romance back into your marriage! (As if she would know anything about that.) How to revamp your wardrobe in five easy steps! But the big interviews, the ones that Poppy ~ Jane Green

Cesar knew better. He did. And love. Love just makes a man weak. A woman, a child - doesn't matter what face the love has, love makes you stupid, it takes you out of your character, twists you, folds you, it drags you out into deep waters and drowns you. Love has you thinking about all the things you buried. All the things you left behind. It has you thinking about your mother, who was a nurse once, wearing scrubs and coming home late, before all the fighting, before the vodka, before the heroin, before Cesar found her in the bathtub sleeping in her own blood.
Love has you crying on the couch while you're feeding your baby. Not even a month old and you're leaving him. Not because you want to, but because of love. Because you love him and you know he's better off with somebody else. Because it's the right thing to do. But righteousness doesn't take the edge of the sting. Because it hurts. Because he's looking up at you. His eyes wide in awe like you're God herself. Your son cannot understand a word that you're saying.

He doesn't understand that you're saying goodbye. ~ Daniel Abbott

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. ~ Marcel Proust

She loved nothing in the world except this woman's son, wanted him alive more than anybody, but hadn't the least bit of control over the predator that lived inside her. Totally taken over by her anaconda love, she had no self left, no fears, no wants, no intelligence that was her own [ ... ] Ruth heard the supplication in her words and it seemed to her that she was not looking at a person but at an impulse, a cell, a red corpuscle that neither knows nor understands why it is driven to spend its whole life in one pursuit: swimming up a dark tunnel toward the muscle of a heart or an eye's nerve end that it both nourished and fed from. ~ Toni Morrison

You never look at the backside of a mirror because when you do, it'll affect your future because you're looking at yourself backwards. No, you're looking at your inner self and you don't recognize it because you've never seen it before. ~ Gus Van Sant

He only invited me because of you and Chase.'
'Right,' she said, following me inside. 'He's never shown the slightest interest in you before. I mean, he's never stared at you like you're the only person in the room when we're all together. Or sulked around for days because you turned him down for a dance. Or touched the sleeve of your sweater when he thinks no one's looking-'
'He's never done any of that,' I said. Then, less confidently, 'Has he? ~ Claire LaZebnik

Here's the amazing thing about sex: you get a whole person to yourself, for the first time since you were a baby. Someone who is looking at you - just you - and thinking about you, and wanting you, and you haven't even had to lie at the bottom of the stairs and pretend you're dead to get them to do it. ~ Caitlin Moran

I was 16 years old, and I was just flailing around, looking for an interest. I heard, you know, these jazz records. They were modern records, at the time in the '50s, and I realized that I didn't fully get what was going on. But I liked a lot of what I heard. ~ Harvey Pekar

Twenty days," I said, looking at my father. "I'd say you're right." We smiled and stroked the leaves like swaddled babes, enjoying the soft music they created together in the breeze. ~ William Kamkwamba

Lyndon Johnson was a master of self-justification. According to his biographer Robert Caro, when Johnson came to believe in something, he would believe in it "totally, with absolute conviction, regardless of previous beliefs, or of the facts in the matter." George Reedy, one of Johnson's aides, said that he "had a remarkable capacity to convince himself that he held the principles he should hold at any given time, and there was something charming about the air of injured innocence with which he would treat anyone who brought forth evidence that he had held other views in the past. It was not an act… He had a fantastic capacity to persuade himself that the 'truth' which was convenient for the present was the truth and anything that conflicted with it was the prevarication of enemies. He literally willed what was in his mind to become reality." Although Johnson's supporters found this to be a rather charming aspect of the man's character, it might well have been one of the major reasons that Johnson could not extricate the country from the quagmire of Vietnam. A president who justifies his actions only to the public might be induced to change them. A president who has justified his actions to himself, believing that he has the truth, becomes impervious to self-correction. ~ Carol Tavris, Elliot Aronson

I don't look at our society today too much. My focus is still in the past, and part of the reason is because what I do - the wellspring of art, or what I do - l get from the blues. So I listen to the music of a particular period that I'm working on, and I think inside the music is clues to what is happening with the people. ~ August Wilson

If all we see are cinders and ashes, all we see is 'what was' at the expense of what the cinders and ashes are preparing to be. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

The first book I ever read that made me cry. I was seven and hadn't realized books could do that. Just finish you like that. I was sitting in a beanbag chair in the school library when the book ended, weeping, looking at all the books on the shelves all around me, and I decided then and there that I never wanted to be anywhere else. ~ Mary Ann Rivers

But I'm afraid it can't be done."
"Certainly not; it can't be done," repeated the Humbug.
"Why not?" asked Milo.
"Why not indeed?" exclaimed the bug, who seemed equally at home on either side of an argument.
"Much too difficult," replied the king.
"Of course," emphasized the bug, "much too difficult."
"You could if you really wanted to," insisted Milo.
"By all means, if you really wanted to, you could," the Humbug agreed.
"How?" asked Azaz, glaring at the bug.
"How?" inquired Milo, looking the same way.
"A simple task," began the Humbug, suddenly wishing he were somewhere else, "for a brave lad with a stout heart, a steadfast dog, and a serviceable small automobile. ~ Norton Juster