Past Being Good Quotes

#1. My sense of being, my identity, whatever you want to call it, it doesn't reside in my parts. It lives in my past, and in the continuity of my present thoughts, and in my hopes for the future. I'm more afraid of losing a memory than a limb. - Author: Josiah Bancroft

#2. I would have thought,"he went on,"that by now you would have gotten past not being able to trust anyone, Maryse."
"Some things you never forget," she said. - Author: Cassandra Clare

#3. Is it intelligent to make ourselves miserable while living in the past, haunted by memories while being inexorably swallowed by them? Whenever we reminisce about our past life, we are advised in our tradition to be in a state of gratefulness. Be mindful of nurturing unnecessary grief and staying stuck in old pain. - Author: Hiram Crespo

#4. Let me tell you what I think about your fucking rules," he said, his voice dripping with venom as he pushed past Liam. "You sit up in your room and you pretend like you want what's best for everyone, but you don't do any of the work yourself. I can't tell if you're just a spoiled little shit, or if you're too worried about getting your pretty princess hands dirty, but it sucks. You are fucking awful, and you sure as hell don't have me fooled ... You talk about us all being equals, like we're one big rainbow of peace and all that bullshit, but you never once believed that yourself, did you? You won't let anyone contact their parents, and you don't care about the kids that are still trapped in camps your father set up. You wouldn't even listen when the Watch kids brought it up. So what I want to know is, why can't we leave? ... What's the point of this place, other than for you to get off on how great you are and toy with people and their feelings? - Author: Alexandra Bracken

#5. In spite of the many pills she swallowed and the drops and powders out of the little bottles and boxes of which Madame Schoss, who was fond of such things, made a large collection, and in spite of being deprived of the country life to which she was accustomed, youth prevailed. Natasha's grief began to be overlaid by the impressions of daily life, it ceased to press so painfully on her heart, it gradually faded into the past, and she began to recover physically. - Author: Leo Tolstoy

#6. Is the parent better than the child into whom he has cast his ripened being? Whence, then, this worship of the past? - Author: Ralph Waldo Emerson

#7. I'm nearly 50. I'm past being photographed falling out of bars. - Author: K.d. Lang

#8. Even when the divorce papers had come in the mail, even when he'd finally signed them, he'd still felt married, still felt as if he had to be faithful to those vows even though they were empty and meaningless now. Perhaps that was just because he was afraid of moving past those vows, afraid of starting over. So now he looked straight into the eyes of that fear. The fear of being hurt again. The fear of not being worthy of a woman's love. The fear of failure. - Author: Ann H. Gabhart

#9. I'd gone so far past my fear threshold, I'd completely given up on being afraid - Author: Deanna Chase

#10. For the past few years, I've been more selective than I have any right to be, but I think that's finally starting to work in my favor. I think I get way too much credit for making what people consider to be smart choices, but it's only because I made a decision to stop worrying about making money. - Author: Lizzy Caplan

#11. I can feel the love I'm a part of surrounding me and flowing through me; I'm near home and I'm standing hand in hand with those I love, past and present, in the sun, on the outskirts of something that feels almost like... being free. - Author: Bruce Springsteen

#12. He walked ahead of me down the hall and I was careful to keep a few steps behind him. I needed the distance. Close human contact was starting to scare me. In the past few weeks, all I'd known around people was pain. When people were face-to-face, tragedy struck. A look felt like a bee sting. It started to seem natural to be separated from people. I craved being alone. No one could hurt me inside my wall screens. They were slowly becoming a comfort, a cushion between me and the harsh world outside. I was stepping out of it less and less. - Author: Katie Kacvinsky

#13. It says, I think, that at root that we're children, or we'd like to be. And the best of us each keep as much of that childhood with us as we grow into adulthood, as we can muster ... And even after we're past the point of being able to play the game with any skill, if we love it, then it's like Peter Pan - we remain boys forever, we don't die. - Author: John Thorn

#14. The assumption behind any theology that I've ever been familiar with is that there is a profound beauty in being, simply in itself. Poetry, at least traditionally, has been an educing of the beauty of language, the beauty of experience, the beauty of the working of the mind, and so on. The pastor does, indeed, appreciate it. - Author: Marilynne Robinson

#15. To feel safe is to stop living in my head and sink down into my heart and feel liked and accepted ... not having to hide anymore and distract myself with books, television, movies, ice cream, shallow conversation ... staying in the present moment and not escaping into the past or projecting into the future, alert and attentive to the now ... feeling relaxed and not nervous or jittery ... no need to impress or dazzle others or draw attention to myself. ... Unself-conscious, a new way of being with myself, a new way of being in the world ... calm, unafraid, no anxiety about what's going to happen next ... loved and valued ... just being together as an end in itself. - Author: Brennan Manning

#16. How do we meditate? It is not thinking about the past or future. It starts with being present. - Author: Ilchi Lee

#17. In place of hope all that remained to him was endurance, and somewhere beyond the long sequence of nights, beyond the orchards that faded, blossomed, and perished once more, beyond all the people he had encountered and who had then passed on into the past, there existed his fated day-when he would have to take to his bed, turn his face to the wall, and pass away without being able to cry - Author: Andrei Platonov

#18. The man was impossible. To her every retort,he had a counter. "A beak you may want to avoid for I will use it."
His dimples turned into craters. "Aye, my lady,that you most certainly are not afraid of using. I think I actually see the small scars along your wrists and hands from where you missed your intended target and clipped yourself."
Edythe opened her mouth,ready to send out another assualt, when the sparkle in his hazel eyes captured her attention. Tyr was not making fun of her. Rather,he was truly enjoying their conversation, and if she was being honest, so was she. Inclining her head in agreement, she curled her lips mischievously and said, "Inflictions all finches must learn to endure."
"Indeed they must," Tyr replied with a bow. "You,Lady Finch,are a genuine surprise. These past few days,your elder sister has been gracious, kind, and all things a lady should be when welcoming a guest, but it seems that only my friend Ranulf can turn her into a fiery tempest. And each time she does, it pulls him farther in.I see now why he is susceptible to such treatment."
Edythe briefly closed her eyes and gave a quick shake to her head. "You enjoy being insulted?"
"You have not insulted me, you couldn't. You don't know me well enough.Nor I you. We just merely sparred and I am finding that I like wit in a woman, a most uncommon trait where I have been. If I were not so decided in my ways,you,dear Finch, would be in trouble."
"Well,then I thank the Lord - Author: Michele Sinclair

#19. When difficulties seem insurmountable, optimists react in a more constructive and creative way. They accept the facts with realism, know how to rapidly identify the positive in adversity, draw lessons from it, and come up with an alternative solution or turn to a new project. Pessimists would rather turn away from the problem or adopt escapist strategies - sleep, isolation, drug or alcohol abuse - that diminish their focus on the problem.9 Instead of confronting them with resolve, they prefer to brood over their misfortunes, nurture illusions, dream up "magic" solutions, and accuse the whole world of being against them. They have a hard time drawing lessons from the past, which often leads to the repetition of their problems. They are more fatalistic ("I told you it wouldn't work. It's always the same, no matter what I do") and are quick to see themselves as "mere pawns in the game of life. - Author: Matthieu Ricard

#20. I would like to see all this as a big joke that is being played upon us, but I have seen what was wrought in the past
the men who were destroyed without their being lifted from the dungheap of poverty, without recourse to justice. - Author: F. Sionil Jose

#21. Growing up, I often felt I would've been treated better if I were a hundred percent one or the other. If I were all Korean, I could have just blended in. If I were all white, I wouldn't have been met with the same curious stares - What are you? - the same assumptions about my mother's past. To be almost seemed to be worse than being not at all. "I didn't know - Author: Patricia Park

#22. Leaving home is living as though I do not yet have a home, and must look far and wide to find one. Home is the center of my being, where I can hear the voice that says, "You are my beloved. On you my favor rests," the same voice that gave life to the first Adam and spoke to Jesus, the second Adam. The same voice that speaks to all the children of God and sets them free to live in the midst of a dark world while remaining in the light. I have heard that voice. It has spoken to me in the past and continues to speak to me now. It is the never-interrupted voice of love speaking from eternity and giving life and love wherever it is heard. When I hear that voice, I know that I am home with God and have nothing to fear. As the beloved of my heavenly Father, "I can walk in the valley of darkness: no evil would I fear." As the beloved I can "cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out devils." Having "received without charge," I can "give without charge." As the Beloved, I can confront, console, admonish, and encourage without fear of rejection or need for affirmation. As the Beloved I can suffer persecution without desire for revenge and receive praise without using it as a proof of my goodness. As the Beloved I can be tortured and killed without ever having to doubt that the love that is given to me is stronger than death. As the Beloved I am free to live and give life, free also to die while giving life.
Jesus has made it clear to me that the same voice that h - Author: Henri J.M. Nouwen

#23. Faculty X is simply that latent power in human beings possess to reach beyond the present. After all, we know perfectly well that the past is as real as the present, and that New York and Singapore and Lhasa and Stepney Green are all as real as the place I happen to be in at the moment. Yet my senses do not agree. They assure me that this place, here and now, is far more real than any other place or any other time. Only in certain moments of great inner intensity do I know this to be a lie. Faculty X is a sense of reality, the reality of other places and other times, and it is the possession of it - fragmentary and uncertain though it is - that distinguishes man from all other animals - Author: Colin Wilson

#24. Yesterday is history, but if you don't learn from your past mistakes you will continue to make the same mistakes. Tomorrow isn't a mystery. Go after your goals with every breathe you take, and the future is far from being a mystery. Today isn't a gift. You have to earn it every day. - Author: Steve Kaufman

#25. Divinity is the elementary personality of a human being. When he can stand before corruption and win, that is an undivided personality. It is called divinity. - Author: Harbhajan Singh Yogi

#26. Boredom is not an end-product, is comparatively rather an early stage in life and art. You've got to go by or past or through boredom, as through a filter, before the clear product emerges. - Author: F Scott Fitzgerald

#27. And there he stood looking like... RON WEASLEY to be precise….and that's where it all started.
People found him "boring" , "dumb" but did I really see what others couldn't ? Or was I blinded with that deep Infatuation.
Well he din't have the perfect body , his hair was always messy like a frizzy bear, stammered when he spoke but his flaws had swept me off by my feet like a Supernova. From the time we knew about each others existence on planet earth we din't really like each other reason being we had fought on a whole new level in a page on Facebook [ lame, but we were young].
Then as we reached high school… things became different, there was a drastic change.
"WE BECAME FRIENDS"
First it was really scary but as time passed we became inseparable. But I din't realize that amidst all that small inside jokes , teasing , recalling our embarassing past …I fell for him. And that too for the first time and believe me I fell hard. In a blink of an eye he who was a complete "moron" turned out to be the person who mattered the most to me. . . - Author: Biipso

#28. My alcoholism is in no way any sort of excuse for any of my past behaviors. Just because I quit drinking, my life was not suddenly transformed into a tabula rasa-if I have wronged someone, drunk or not, then the responsibility for this lies squarely with me. And I must do my best to set things square with that person. ...
....And just because I am sober now does not mean anyone else should care. I do not deserve a cookie for finally trying to act like a decent human being. - Author: D. Randall Blythe

#29. Scientology, a fundamentally narcissistic philosophy that demonizes doubt and insecurity as products of the "reactive mind," is a belief system tailor-made for actors. The Training Routines that are part of early Scientology indoctrination have been compared to acting exercises: students are taught to "duplicate," or mirror, a partner's actions; project their "intention," or thoughts, onto inanimate objects; experiment with vocal tones, the most dominant being a commanding bark known as "tone 40"; and deepen their ability to "be in their bodies" without reacting to outside stimuli. In auditing, Scientologists re-create scenes from past lives. Some processes focus directly on members "mocking up," or visualizing themselves, in different scenarios. - Author: Janet Reitman

#30. If I had hoped to skirt the sense of being a stranger in the world by coming to Ghana, then disappointment awaited me. And I had suspected as much before I arrived. Being a stranger concerns not only matters of familiarity, belonging, and exclusion but as well involves a particular relation to the past. If the past is another country, then I am its citizen. I am the relic of an experience most preferred not to remember, as if the sheer will to forget could settle or decide the matter of history. .I am a reminder that twelve million crossed the Atlantic Ocean and the past is not yet over. I am the progeny of the captives. I am the vestige of the dead. And history is how the secular world attends to the dead. - Author: Saidiya Hartman

#31. Weakness, like not being able to bury the past. Weakness, like not giving up hope when you know you should. - Author: Julianna Baggott

#32. It was all beginning to run together in the back of Eleanor's mind, and the things that had probably really happened were confused with the things that probably hadn't. And every day everything in her whole past life - the real things and the imaginary things - was being pushed farther and farther back, because going to high school was so enormous, so vast! so different from all of Eleanor's life before. The milling crowds in the hall between classes, all those jostling elbows and swollen shoulders and bosoms, all those enormous hands and feet, they pushed and thumped and shoved at Eleanor's childhood, until there was no room anymore for anything but now, right now, a hurrying rushing now that was just incredibly thrilling, or absolutely rotten and just disgusting, this heaving present moment, right now. - Author: Jane Langton

#33. I expressed skepticism, in the first chapter, about the utility of time machines in historical research. I especially advised against graduate students relying on them, because of the limited perspective you tend to get from being plunked down in some particular part of the past, and the danger of not getting back in time for your orals. - Author: John Lewis Gaddis

#34. And what am I? I'm forever stuck in a nonexistent place where no time passes and I do so much and learn so much but I don't grow. I'm still teenage me wanting more. Wanting less. Wanting anything and everything and I think I should grow up now. Grow out of childish anxiety and sorrows for all things past and everyone has moved on from schools and neighbourhoods and I moved first and swore the loudest on never coming back but now I dream about all things past. Going back. How do you transition from being a lost teenager, to one of those calm and serene souls of integrity and certainty? Because that's what I must do, now, soon. Do others feel left behind too, or is it just me? Like the train left with everyone on it and I'm still standing on the platform trying to decide if I should watch the sky for another hour or go change my ticket. Maybe sometimes you need to just close your eyes and jump on the train without feeling ready, and grow your steady breath on the way. I think sometimes you don't know how much you're capable of until you're forced to grow into it. - Author: Charlotte Eriksson

#35. My past is an echo of my perfect present being the shadow of my stellar future. - Author: Lyna Jones

#36. Employment in the Small Bookstore"
Twelve Poems, 1975

The dust is almost motionless
in this narrowness, this stillness,
yet how unlike a coffin
it is, sometimes letting a live one in,
sometimes out
and the air,
though paused, impends not a thing,
the silence isn't sinister,
and in fact not much goes on
at the Ariel Book Shop today,
no one weeps in the back
room full of books, old books, no one
is tearing the books to shreds, in fact
I am merely sitting here
talking to no one, no one being here,
and I am blameless,
More,
I am grateful for the job,
I am fond of the books and touch them,
I am grateful that King St. goes down
to the river, and that the rain
is lovely, the afternoon green.
If the soft falling away of the afternoon
is all there is, it is nearly
enough, just
let me hear the beautiful clear voice
of a woman in song passing
toward silence, and then
that will be all for me
at five o'clock
I will walk
down to see the untended
sailing yachts of the Potomac
bobbing hopelessly in another silence,
the small silence that gets to be a long
one when the past stops talking
to you because it is dead,
and still you listen,
hearing just the tiny
agonies of old boats
on a cloudy day, in cloudy water.
Talk to it. Men are talking to it
by Cape Charles, for th - Author: Denis Johnson

#37. He is ETERNAL, which means that He antedates time and is wholly independent of it. Time began in Him and will end in Him. To it He pays no tribute and from it He suffers no change.
He is IMMUTABLE, which means that He has never changed and can never change in any smallest measure. To change He would need to go from better to worse or from worse to better. He cannot do either, for being perfect He cannot become more perfect, and if He were to become less perfect He would be less than God.
He is OMNISCIENT, which means that He knows in one free and effortless act all matter, all spirit, all relationships, all events. He has no past and He has no future.
He IS, and none of the limiting and qualifying terms used of creatures can apply to Him. - Author: A.W. Tozer

#38. I don't view myself from the past present or future tense i like to think of the world from my own personal point of view at whatever time i feel that is relayed to me in conjunction with my well being to progressively grow successfully finacially as well as mentally. - Author: Riff Raff

#39. The aged Summerlea nurse pushed past Valik and Laci and stalked over to his sickbed. "You are supposed to be sleeping." Her face scrunched up in an expression of severe disapproval. She didn't care that he was king. She chided him like she might any misbehaving schoolboy.

He almost smiled. It was clear Tildavera Greenleaf was accustomed to being in charge, and equally accustomed to speaking her mind and having her orders obeyed. But this was one order he had no intention of heeding.

"I've slept long enough. Khamsin told me you were the best healer in all of Mystral, and it's clear she wasn't exaggerating. You did a fine job bringing me back from the brink of death. I'm sure you can keep me clinging to life a while longer."

The old woman's lips pursed. "My patients do not 'cling to life,' " she snapped. "I pride myself on their making a full and miraculous recovery. But carting them all about the countryside with their insides hanging out is not at all conducive to that outcome! - Author: C.L. Wilson

#40. A hedgehog flies from the safety of a bush, startling me. It darts past us in a terrible hurry. Kartik nods toward the furry little thing. "Don't mind him. He's off to meet his lady friend."
"How can you be sure?"
"He has on his best hedgehog suit."
"Ah, I should have noticed." I say, happy to be playing this game-any game-with him. I put my hand on the tree's trunk and swing myself around it slowly, letting my body feel gravity's pull. "And why has he worn his best?"
"He's been away in London, you see, and now he has returned to her," Kartik continues.
"And what if she is angry with him for being away so long?"
Kartik circles just behind me. "She will forgive him."
"Will she?" I say pointedly.
"It is his hope that she will, for he didn't mean to upset her." Kartik answers, and I am no longer sure we speak of the hedgehog.
"And is he happy to see her again?"
"Yes," Kartik says. "He should like to stay longer, but he cannot."
The bark chafes against my hand. "Why is that?"
"He has his reasons, and hopes his lady will understand them one day." Kartik has changed direction. He comes around the other side of the tree. We are face to face. A palm of moonglow reaches through the branches to caress his face.
"Oh," I say, heart beating fast.
"And what would the lady hedgehog say to that?" he asks. His voice soft and low.
"She would say..." I swallow hard.
Kartik steps closer. "Yes?"
"She would say," - Author: Libba Bray

#41. Calumny... gives [Harry] a spiritual purity in the sense that it scours away any outward show, any wish to live by the impression he makes on others. It gives him a lonely independence, so that he is able to act from his own depth. As he goes on to fulfill "his true destiny", which as far as he knows is his death, he is able to walk, hidden from view, past the woman he loves, without speaking, without looking back. This ability to act alone contrasts him with Voldemort, who needs others. That need is apparent in Voldemort's possession of Quirrell.

Voldemort's shallowness is apparent in the way Pettigrew has to do his work for him and then has to carry him to his rebirthing. Above all, it is in his need to be encircled by Death Eaters. Yet Voldemort is not truly in relationship with any of these people. He is connected to them only by magic, manipulation and threats. To be truly in relation with others, he would need, like Harry, to be capable of acting from his own depth. He would need to be able to act WITHOUT them. Voldemort, who wants to be independent, cannot truly act alone. ... Voldemort lives outwardly, in his domination of others; Harry lives inwardly, in the purity of his own being. - Author: Luke Bell

#42. We can be almost certain of being wrong about the future, if we are wrong about the past. - Author: Gilbert K. Chesterton

#43. We look back through countless millions of years and see the great will to live struggling out of the intertidal slime, struggling from shape to shape and from power to power, crawling and then walking confidently upon the land, struggling generation after generation to master the air, creeping down the darkness of the deep; we see it turn upon itself in rage and hunger and reshape itself anew, we watch it draw nearer and more akin to us, expanding, elaborating itself, pursuing its relentless inconceivable purpose, until at last it reaches us and its being beats through our brains and arteries...It is possible to believe that all the past is but the beginning of a beginning, and that all that is and has been is but the twilight of the dawn. It is possible to believe that all that the human mind has accomplished is but the dream before the awakening; out of our lineage, minds will spring that will reach back to us in our littleness to know us better than we know ourselves. A day will come, one day in the unending succession of days, when beings, beings who are now latent in our thoughts and hidden in our loins, shall stand upon this earth as one stands upon a footstool, and shall laugh and reach out their hands amidst the stars. - Author: H.G. Wells

#44. It's easy to identify many investment managers with great recent records. But past results, though important, do not suffice when prospective performance is being judged. How the record has been achieved is crucial ... - Author: Warren Buffett

#45. Perhaps we were each allotted only a certain amount of love - enough for only an initial meeting - a serendipitous clumsiness. When it leaves to find others, the difficulty begins because we are faced with our humanness, our past, our very being. - Author: Simon Van Booy