Lost Years Quotes

I was horrified. Absolutely heart sick. All I could think of was that after 23 years together, I'd lost my faithful ally. I couldn't sleep, couldn't get the loss out of my mind. It was like discovering that someone in my family had died. ~ Ben Crenshaw

Take nothing and no one for granted. Time used to be my friend, and now it's a skittish acquaintance at best.
Let life unfold, say what you mean. You can't always think about what you've lost, or what you don't have, or what you didn't get. Because when you do that, you're missing out on the now. You can't know if you'll be here tomorrow or a year from now. ~ Adriana Trigiani

It is beyond a doubt that during the sixteenth century, and the years immediately preceding and following it, poisoning had been brought to a pitch of perfection which remains unknown to modern chemistry, but which is indisputably proved by history. Italy, the cradle of modern science, was at that time, the inventor and mistress of these secrets, many of which are lost. ~ Honore De Balzac

I began to mourn the simplicity of my childhood, the warmth of my family that now seemed lost, years had passed by and we had all been weathered by the world. At times all I could see in their eyes was the reflection of loneliness in the longing we had for each other but there was always that glint of bitterness because they never really forgive you for leaving them do they? ~ Donal O'Callaghan

Every Christmas now for years, I have found myself wondering about the point of the celebration. As the holiday has become more ecumenical and secular, it has lost much of the magic that I remember so fondly from childhood. ~ Whitley Strieber

I have lost years that I will never get back. Only now am I just beginning to live, on the verge of old age. It is painful and unfair. But today I have a different attitude to life: it can't be constructed from superficial things, no matter how attractive they may appear. Neither wealth not appearances have any importance now.
Pain gave me new life. It took a long time for me to die as Malika, General Oufkir's eldest daughter, the child of a powerful figure, of a past. I've gained an identity. My own identity. And that is priceless.
If there had not been all that waste, all that horror ... I'd almost venture to say that my suffering made me grow. In any case, it changed me. for the better. It's as well to make the best of things. ~ Malika Oufkir

On New Year's Eve, my dear friend lost his battle with depression ... Though he wasn't the first friend I've lost to suicide, I sure hope he's the last. I wish I had the chance to go back and tell them what they meant to me. I wish I had the chance to beg them to seek help, to keep fighting. I wish they knew that they were surrounded by countless others who struggle on a daily basis. ~ Jared Padalecki

When I touch her, my fingers don't question what she is. My body knows who she is. The strange thing about strangers is that they are unknown and known. There is a pattern to her, a shape I understand, a private geometry that numbers mine. She is a maze where I got lost years ago, and now find the way out. She is the missing map. She is the place that I am. She is a stranger. She is the strange that I am beginning to love. ~ Jeanette Winterson

You need not regret lost years if you have learned great things. ~ Jack Cady

So pointless to play over how our years might have been put to better use. They can't be recovered now. We do well not to grieve on and on. Ancient voices may have much to tell, but no one's listening. ~ Michael Ben Zehabe

Whether or not you find your own way, you're bound to find some way. If you happen to find my way, please return it, as it was lost years ago. I imagine by now it's quite rusty. ~ Norton Juster

Those were the black ears; the lost years. He had allowed himself to become the victim of events, rather than their master. [Jakab] ~ Stephen Lloyd Jones

And our lips. There isn't enough skin, enough spit, enough time, for the lost years that our lips are trying to make up for as they find each other. We kiss. The electric current switches to high. The lights throughout all of Brooklyn must be surging. ~ Gayle Forman

I remembered that once, as a child, I was filled with wonder, that I had marveled at tri-folded science projects, encyclopedias, and road atlases. I left much of that wonder somewhere back in Baltimore. Now I had the privilege of welcoming it back like a long-lost friend, though our reunion was laced with grief; I mourned over all the years that were lost. The mourning continues. Even today, from time to time, I find myself on beaches watching six-year-olds learn to surf, or at colleges listening to sophomores slip from English to Italian, or at cafés seeing young poets flip though "The Waste Land," or listening to the radio where economists explain economic things that I could've explored in my lost years, mourning, hoping that I and all my wonder, my long-lost friend, have not yet run out of time, though I know that we all run out of time, and some of us run out of it faster. ~ Ta-Nehisi Coates

I am getting older and am, I daresay, impatient of lost years and months," Fawcett complained to Keltie in early 1918. Later ~ David Grann

When he told F. of his disgust at the eyelid's movement, he must have been sixteen. When he decided to study medicine, he must have been nineteen; by then, having already signed on to the contract to forget, he no longer remembered what he had said to F. three years before. Too bad for him. The memory might have alerted him, might have helped him see that his choice of medicine was wholly theoretical, made without the slightest self- knowledge.
Thus he studied medicine for three years before giving up with a sense of shipwreck. What to choose after those lost years? What to attach to, if his inner self should keep as silent as it had before? He walked down the broad outside staircase of the medical school for the last time, with the feeling that he was about to find himself alone on a platform all the trains had left. ~ Milan Kundera

Oh well,' said Jack: and then, 'Did you ever meet Bach?'

'Which Bach?'

'London Bach.'

'Not I.'

'I did. He wrote some pieces for my uncle Fisher, and his young man copied them out fair. But they were lost years and years ago, so last time I was in town I went to see whether I could find the originals: the young man has set up on his own, having inherited his master's music-library. We searched through the papers - such a disorder you would hardly credit, and I had always supposed publishers were as neat as bees - we searched for hours, and no uncle's pieces did we find. But the whole point is this: Bach had a father.'

'Heavens, Jack, what things you tell me. Yet upon recollection I seem to have known other men in much the same case.'

'And this father, this old Bach, you understand me, had written piles and piles of musical scores in the pantry.'

'A whimsical place to compose in, perhaps; but then birds sing in trees, do they not? Why not antediluvian Germans in a pantry?'

'I mean the piles were kept in the pantry. Mice and blackbeetles and cook-maids had played Old Harry with some cantatas and a vast great passion according to St Mark, in High Dutch; but lower down all was well, and I brought away several pieces, 'cello for you, fiddle for me, and some for both together. It is strange stuff, fugues and suites of the last age, crabbed and knotted sometimes and not at all in the modern ta ~ Patrick O'Brian

But we are almost certainly going to miss our [global warming] deadline. We cannot get the 10 lost years back, and by the time a new global agreement to replace the Kyoto accord is negotiated and put into effect, there will probably not be enough time left to stop the warming short of the point where we must not go. ~ Gwynne Dyer

It took me far too long to realize that lost years and relationships cannot be recovered. That damage done to oneself and others cannot always be put right again. ~ Kay Redfield Jamison

I think so. There are so many tales, so strange and beautiful and perfect. They are not what are real, but better. I thought I had something that was magic once, but I lost it, and now I don't think it was at all." She touched her chest where the handkerchief had been and frowned. "I wish there was magic. If all the tales were true, then maybe they could tell me what I'm doing, and what I am to do now."
"Ah, now, don't cry over lost years and forgetfulness. The tales tell what they can. The rest is for us to learn. The question is, are we smart enough to figure for ourselves? Now, that's what I'd like to know. ~ Shannon Hale

And if, behind closed eyes, Cerris saw a face other than hers, a face so slightly younger, gazing at him sadly across a gulf of lost years and broken promises ... Well, it would never hurt her if she never knew. ~ Ari Marmell

Look, look, we tell each other. It's Tom!

He's Mr. Bellamy to his history students. But he's Tom to us. Tom! It's so good to see him. So wonderful to see him. Tom is one of us. Tom went through it all with us. Tom made it through. He was there in the hospital with so many of us, the archangel of St. Vincent's, our healthier version, prodding the doctors and calling over the nurses and holding our hands and holding the hands of our partners, our parents, our little sisters - anyone who had a hand to be held. He had to watch so many of us die, had to say goodbye so many times. Outside of our rooms he would get angry, upset, despairing. But when he was with us, it was like he was powered solely by an engine of grace. Even the people who loved us would hesitate at first to touch us - more from the shock of our diminishment, from the strangeness of how we were both gone and present, not who we were but still who we were. Tom became used to this. First because of Dennis, the way he stayed with Dennis until the very end. He could have left after that, after Dennis was gone. We wouldn't have blamed him. But he stayed. When his friends got sick, he was there. And for those of us he'd never know before - he was always a smile in the room, always a touch on the shoulder, a light flirtation that we needed. The y should have made him a nurse. They should have made him mayor. He lost years of his life to us, although that's not the story he'd tell. He would say he gained. And he ~ David Levithan

(And when you've been hurt once, you're afraid to try again later, in dread of enduring the same pain. You avoid getting hurt in an attempt to avoid suffering: for years, this principle will serve as my holy sacrament. So many lost years.) ~ Philippe Besson

Saul had gained his six-foot frame at sixteen, but his muscles didn't arrive until his early twenties. Between those lost years, he was a gangly, uncoordinated klutz. He was told that he could improve his dancing by watching himself in the mirror. He tried. What he saw was so repulsive that he resolved never to inflict himself on a dance partner.
These days, Saul hid those memories behind weight lifting and jogging. His new athletic physique hid his aimless decade as an outsider, an odd and lonely kid--as he remembered it. ~ Michael Ben Zehabe

And it is silence that she hears, the silence of lost years that have no voice left in them. ~ Rose Tremain

If you're yelling you're the one who's lost control of the conversation. ~ Taylor Swift

They heard Hugo ask if the plan for the hors d'oeuvres was still in operation, and they heard Colette ask about plucking the feathers off crows, and they heard Kevin complain that he didn't know whether to hold the birdpaper in his right hand or his left hand, and they heard Mr. Lesko insult Mrs. Morrow, and the bearded man sing a song to the woman with the crow-shaped hat, and they heard a man call for Bruce and a woman call for her mother and dozens of people whisper to and shout at, argue with and agree upon, angrily accuse and meekly defend, furiously compliment and kindly insult dozens of other people, both inside and outside the Hotel Denouement, whose names the Baudelaires recognized, forgot, and had never heard before. Each story had its story, and each story's story was unfathomable in the Baudelaire orphans' short journey, and many of the stories' stories are unfathomable to me, even after all these lonely years and all this lonely research. Perhaps some of these stories are clearer to you, because you have spied upon the people involved. Perhaps Mrs. Bass has changed her name and lives near you, or perhaps Mr. Remora's name is the same, and he lives far away. Perhaps Nero now works as a grocery store clerk, or Geraldine Julienne now teaches arts and crafts. Perhaps Charles and Sir are no longer partners, and you have had the occasion to study one of them as he sat across from you on a bus, or perhaps Hugo, Colette, and Kevin are still comrades, and you have followe ~ Lemony Snicket

I'm just a core, a kernel, a coal tucked in a bit of breathing flesh, listening to the rain. My life fills this place, no longer meager, no longer lost or stolen or waiting to begin. I drink rain and it quenches an ancient thirst. ~ Jean Hegland

The person of wisdom is the person of years. ~ Edward Young

I think all of us, under certain circumstances, could be capable of some very despicable acts. And that's why, over the years, in my movies I've had characters who didn't care what people thought about them. We try to be as true to them as possible and maybe see part of ourselves in there that we may not like. ~ Martin Scorsese

I forced myself to open my eyes. I was a Puckett, damn it. And Pucketts didn't lose our nerve. We schemed, we interjected, we occasionally drank too much and told someone what we really thought of them at a Christmas party, but we never lost our nerve. ~ Molly Harper

When an object impacts the Moon at high speed, it sets the Moon slightly wobbling. Eventually the vibrations die down but not in so short a period as eight hundred years. Such a quivering can be studied by laser reflection techniques. The Apollo astronauts emplaced in several locales on the Moon special mirrors called laser retroreflectors. When a laser beam from Earth strikes the mirror and bounces back, the round-trip travel time can be measured with remarkable precision. This time multiplied by the speed of light gives us the distance to the Moon at that moment to equally remarkable precision. Such measurements, performed over a period of years, reveal the Moon to be librating, or quivering with a period (about three years) and amplitude (about three meters), consistent with the idea that the crater Giordano Bruno was gouged out less than a thousand years ago. ~ Carl Sagan

A husband and wife found themselves in love with each other for the first time after twenty-seven years of marriage. ~ Honore De Balzac

Over the last twenty years, we've changed the world just enough to make it radically different, but not enough to make it work. ~ Anna Quindlen

I worked consistently on Broadway from when I was 8 years old through 'Spring Awakening,' which I left in 2008. ~ Lea Michele

My family is very musical, I was surrounded by it. And from four years old I was the one that asked my mother could I take piano lessons.It wasn't forced on me. It was something I wanted to do. And ever since, I've never stopped, I've never stopped playing music. I never went through a period where I didn't want to do it. ~ John Legend

For many years, Sierra had compared the Holy Spirit to the wind, as it said the the Bible, noting that it was always there, no matter how faint the breeze. The wind went where it wanted to go, and its path was easy to detect because it moved objects and people. But no one had ever seen the wind. ~ Robin Jones Gunn

Don't need to remind any of you what Tarkin did at the end of the war when there weren't Jedi around to keep a lid on the violence and retribution. We wouldn't be aboard this ship otherwise. The Emperor is going to win-now the populations of the galaxy until the only ones left are the ones he can control. And he and Vader and Tarkin are going to accomplish that with an army of steadfast recruits who might as well be clones for the little independent thinking they do, weapons that haven't been seen in more than a thousand years, and fear. ~ James Luceno

I love getting lost on purpose ~ Lisa Desrochers

Years ago R.N.A. was kind of a bit player in the cell. Now our picture's completely inverted, and we think R.N.A.'s really the important thing. ~ Jack W. Szostak

There is a spirit greater than you, always within reach of you, but he only comes to take charge when your own spirit is lost, and cries out in his own tongue, which you cannot know but only feel, and it is in feeling that you will have orders. Yet not even in feeling, for I felt nothing, only surprise that I was going forward. ~ Richard Llewellyn

Study strategy over the years and achieve the spirit of the warrior. Today is victory over yourself of yesterday; tomorrow is your victory over lesser men. ~ Miyamoto Musashi

Most of the girls I've met since moving here have failed to ignite any modicum of enduring interest. Of course, I've dated; I'm seventeen years old and as horny as the next guy. ~ Siobhan Davis

The first Bond movie I saw at cinemas was 'For Your Eyes Only' when I was almost 10. I got into the Fleming books after watching 'A View To A Kill' a few years later. ~ Stephen Cole

Nothing is more inspiring in today's world of easily dissolved marriages than to observe a husband and wife quietly appreciating and enjoying each other's friendship year in and year out as they experience together the blessings and trials of mortality. ~ Marlin K. Jensen

Did you mark that?"
"Most of it."
"Then I have your obedience."
"I didn't exactly plan to go anywhere this morning, " she told him testily. "But, I wasn't lost. I was just hunting. And I wasn't in trouble."
"Human, you are not yet out of trouble. ~ R. Lee Smith

Forty-five years ago, when I was 18, I came to San Francisco by boat and took two weeks to get here. I had a great impression. I think San Francisco is the welcoming gate for people from Asia. ~ Tadashi Yanai

the world and the people who inhabit it are not the same. The world lies between people, and this in-between – much more than (as is often thought) men or even man – is today the object of the greatest concern and the most obvious upheaval in almost all the countries of the globe. Even where the world is still halfway in order, or is kept halfway in order, the public realm has lost the power of illumination which was originally part of its very nature. More and more people in the countries of the Western world, which since the decline of the ancient world has regarded freedom from politics as one of the basic freedoms, make use of this freedom and have retreated from the world and their obligations within it. This withdrawal from the world need not harm an individual; he may even cultivate great talents to the point of genius and so by a detour be useful to the world again. But with each such retreat an almost demonstrable loss to the world takes place; what is lost is the specific and usually irreplaceable in-between which should have formed between this individual and his fellow men. ~ Hannah Arendt

A great tree develops over time and can tell stories not only those of happiness, but also those that contain pain from what it has seen over the years, and as a result is the wise ancient tree that it is today. As the seasons change, the tree naturally goes through changes as well: where the leaves turn yellow and orange in the fall, falling by the Winter, returning in the Spring, and with full set of new leafs by the Summer. Love is no different in that there will be times when we are fully naked in the Winter, and left to wonder about Spring when it seemed so easy to love, yet the wise tree knows that no winter will last forever no matter how cold it may be. ~ Forrest Curran

I think we could have done a lot more great music, so I was disappointed that we didn't continue making records and touring, but it's hard to argue with 10 good years. ~ Jerry Harrison

I stayed sober for a year and a half, which is like dog years to a 25-year-old. I ~ Sarah Hepola

Sometimes we lost pieces of who we are in times of great sorrow and distress. And then we have to find a way to get them back" -Margery ~ Tracy Holczer

There was no reason why Fox, which, by the time I joined, had been in business for nearly a decade and had been number one in the ratings for more than two years, should still have been running such a rinky-dink operation, with broken-down tape machines, control rooms that smelled like a sewer whenever it rained more than half an inch, chronic intentional understaffing, and a workforce composed of barely trained, underpaid children like myself. But that was the business model, and the ratings were good enough - and the on-air product was just this side of mistake-free enough - that there was no incentive for the bosses to change it. ~ Joe Muto

In a universe suddenly divested of illusion and lights, man feels an alien, a stranger. His exile is without remedy since he is deprived of the memory of a lost home or the hope of a promised land. ~ Albert Camus

There is no place for innocence in this world. ~ Anthony Neilson