Past Meets Present Quotes

My months are spent preparing for the fall. ~ Dominic Riccitello

I do not see how it is possible for a man to die worth fifty million of dollars, or ten million of dollars, in a city full of want, when he meets almost every day the withered hand of beggary and the white lips of famine. How a man can withstand all that, and hold in the clutch of his greed twenty or thirty million of dollars, is past my comprehension. I do not see how he can do it. I should not think he could do it any more than he could keep a pile of lumber on the beach, where hundreds and thousands of men were drowning in the sea. ~ Robert G. Ingersoll

Virtue is attended by more peace of mind than vice, and meets with a more favourable reception from the world. I am sensible, that, according to the past experience of mankind, friendship is the chief joy of human life and moderation the only source of tranquillity and happiness. ~ David Hume

Mentoring is an archetypal activity that has timeless elements which can connect us to the universal ground where nature renews itself and culture becomes reimagined. Youth and elder meet where the pressure of the future meets the presence of the past. Old and young are opposites that secretly identify with each other; for neither fits well into the mainstream of life. ~ Michael Meade

But whether you're a memoirist or not, there's a psychic cost for lopping yourself off from the past: it may continue to tug on you without your being aware of it. And lying about it can - for all but the most hardened sociopath - carve a lonely gap between your disguise and who you really are. The practiced liar also projects her own manipulative, double-dealing façade onto everyone she meets, which makes moving through the world a wary, anxious enterprise. It's hard enough to see what's going on without forcing yourself to look through the wool you've pulled over your own eyes…For the more haunted among us, only looking back at the past can permit it finally to become past. ~ Mary Karr

Reading private correspondence is in poor taste, Lord Ackerly."
"Unless it is terribly interesting," Eleanor says, "which Jessamin's letters are not. Mine, however, are lurid tales of my near-death experience and subsequent sequestering against my will in the home of the mysterious and brooding Lord Ackerly. I fear I may have given you a tragic past and a deadly secret or two."
"Are we staying in a decaying Gothic abbey?" I ask.
"Naturally. When I'm finished, there won't be a person in all the city who isn't writhing with jealousy over the heart-pounding drama of my life." She pauses, tapping her pen thoughtfully against her chin. "I don't suppose you have a cousin? I could very much use a romantic foil."
Finn shakes his head. "Sorry to disappoint."
"Alas. As long as I'm not the friend who meets a tragic end that brings you two together forever through shared grief." Her line meets dead silence, and a sly grin splits her face. "Oh wait, I nearly was. ~ Kiersten White

It is only when the mind is free from the old that it meets everything anew, and in that there is joy. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

In the past, Google has used teams of humans to 'read' its street address images - in essence, to render images into actionable data. But using neural network technology, the company has trained computers to extract that data automatically - and with a level of accuracy that meets or beats human operators. ~ John Battelle

I hope the people I hurt can see past the prank to the very real respect and affection I feel for them. If not, I may have to take my own advice, buy myself some cute shoes and march on. I hope that's not how it ends, though. I hope this boy-meets-girl-pretending-to-be-boy story has a happy ending, one with less bitter and more sweet. ~ Jody Gehrman

What is the future of men who have
lost sight of the past?


Earl Hollsopple lived on the edge of civilization in a deserted shack for nearly forty years. His life was one beautiful night of stargazing after another, until a helicopter flies overhead, and exposing his meager world. It is a sign; it is time for him to return to civilization.

Unknowingly, Earl's journey parallels another he had deeply repressed, and that is his return from the Vietnam War. The lone survivor of a plane crash, Earl waits for rescue that never came. He is left to find his way home alone.

On both his quests, old Earl and young Earl learn lessons of survival, overcoming isolation and handling conflicts; his travels teach him not just about himself, but humankind. Reaching pivotal points in both journeys, Earl meets fateful loves, leading to destinies that are ultimately intertwined.

Everything in life circles until we are able to answer the riddles that plaque man and humanity. Only until we take the journey, solve the problems of our own existence, do we find our way home. ~ Jennifer Ott

DICK'S DESIRE

Dick's eyes-
Soft, cold, and blue-
Meet Devonshire's-
Dark, sexy, and yearning.

Turning away-
Dick grabs two packets of sugar-
While Devonshire's eyes-
Are still upon him-
Pondering his every move.

Is Dick a playboy,
A ladies' man,
A mans' man,
Or a killer?

Does his sex long for,
Something hard-
Or something soft?

Does he need cream in his coffee-
The screaming splash of a man,
Or the sweet flow of a woman?

Finishing up at the bar-
Dick turns to leave-
Meets Devonshire's gaze again-
Hot, thirsty, and longing-
But full of trepidation.

Following the flow of etiquette-
Dick shoots out of the cafe,
Past Devonshire,
And into a world of dashed hopes,
And regrets.

But Devonshire-
No longer of two worlds-
Rises in pursuit-
Goes after Dick,
And taps him on the shoulder.

Dick gives a turn,
Raises his shoulders,
And smiles with interest-
Taking Devonshire's hand,
And asking his name.

Devonshire answers-
Desire.

Dick invites Devonshire to dinner,
Where he eats everything,
Swallowing Dick's life stories,
And devouring his misgivings.

For dessert,
Devonshire takes Dick home,
Into his bed,
Against his flesh,
And gives Dick all of him-
His deepest desires,< ~ Giorge Leedy

The kiss comes hotter and faster than before. Our lips move quickly, a hunger grows between us that can't seem to be quenched. There's a rhythm, a dance, and somehow, I know the steps. An instinct tells me to follow his lead, to explore even further, to touch.
My hands drift down his back and when I feel scorching skin near the hem of his shirt, I gasp for air. Isaiah moans, and his lips leave mine to travel along my throat. My heart picks up speed as my entire body becomes one live electrical current.
His tongue swirls against the sensitive skin right where my jaw meets my neck. I shiver and press my body closer to his. When he meets my lips again, Isaiah loops his arm around my waist and pulls me farther onto the bed. On our sides, his body heat penetrates past my clothes, past my skin, creating an inferno in my blood.
A sudden coldness causes my eyes to flash open. Kneeling beside me, Isaiah's hands go behind his head and he yanks off his shirt, tossing it to the floor. A flutter of excitement and nerves trembles in my stomach. ~ Katie McGarry

Rachel's voice is fierce. The Commander will send out scouts. We should-"
"Oh, he sent out scouts," Willow says. "Five of them. And they were doing a good job of searching the city. Unfortunately for them, all they managed to find was me."
"You killed them?" Ian asks.
"No. I invited them over for dinner." She smacks his shoulder. "the sun is almost down. By the time the Commander realizes his scouts aren't coming back, it will be too dark to send more. He can't risk us seeing torchlight, and they can't search these ruins without light."
"You scare me a little," Ian says, but his voice is full of admiration.
Adam steps closer to Willow. "She's good at everything she does."
Quinn clears his throat." Maybe we should get back to the problem?"
"We can't travel at night," I say. "We need light as well. But we can leave at dawn, and-"
"They'll leave at dawn, too," Adam says. "And if they're that close already, there's no way we can outrun them. Not with children and elderly and the wagons."
"Which is why we're going to create a barrier between us," I say. "Something they can't cross."
Rachel meets my eyes, and her smile is cold and bright. "Fire."
I match her smile with one of my own. "Fire. And when the army finally gets past the blaze, we won't be where they expect, because we're leaving the main road behind."
"What are we waiting for?" Willow asks. "Let's go burn something down. ~ C.J. Redwine

Where brains meet brawn you get heart.
Where reason meets emotion you get prudence.
Where patience meets gratitude you get contentment.
Where humility meets confidence you get grace.
Where integrity meets modesty you get character.
Where theory meets proof you get discovery.
Where trust meets courage you get devotion.
Where hope meets conviction you get faith.
Where law meets equality you get justice.
Where strength meets courage you get confidence.
Where mercy meets action you get charity.
Where virtue meets dignity you get honor.
Where equality meets dignity you get freedom.
Where faith meets action you get results.
Where mind meets body you get experience.
Where heart meets mind you get soul.
Where past meets future you get infinity.
Where time meets truth you get reality.
Where knowledge meets understanding you get illumination.
Where facts meet opinions you get understanding.
Where compassion meets affection you get selflessness.
Where intelligence meets kindness you get wisdom.
Where science meets faith you get God.
Where Heaven meets Hell you get eternity. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

Don't be too quick to draw conclusions from what happens to you; simply let it happen. Otherwise it will be too easy for you to look with blame ... at your past, which naturally has a share with everything that now meets you. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

This may seem labouring the obvious, but in Japan one meets intelligent people who claim that 'logic' is something invented in the West to allow Westerners to win discussions. Indeed, the belief is widespread that the Japanese can as happily do without logic now as they supposedly have for centuries past. ~ Karel Van Wolferen

He smiled tolerantly at her. Rubbing his smooth chin its recently assassinated chin hairs, he studied her. She barely came up to Ronan's shoulder, but she was every bit as big as he, every bit as present. ~ Maggie Stiefvater

God meets us in the tough places and grants us hope and peace. - Loretta Boyett - ~ Gary Chapman

Don't search for heaven and hell in the future. Both are now present. Whenever we manage to love without expectations, calculations, negotiations, we are indeed in heaven. Whenever we fight, hate, we are in hell. ~ Shams Tabrizi

So I see you got to know Trish on a pretty intimate level tonight," Max said, focusing her attention back on the present as they made their way down the deserted roads back to her house.
"She was definitely…friendly."
What Landon casually defined as friendly was what Max more accurately described as molestation. Her hands had disappeared under the table, rubbing his leg or whatever she was doing, more times than she spent holding her damn cards. Landon's indifference to the whole thing was entirely impossible to read. Was he enjoying the attention? Wouldn't any man? Not that it was any of her business. Landon was just some guy that she'd let stay with her for a few days. The fact that he was good-looking was irrelevant. Trish could have him for all she cared as long as they kept the indecencies out of her house.
"Well, don't you worry about her. She's a bit of a flirt when she's drunk. I'm pretty sure she'd hit on a monkey."
"You just compared me to a monkey and you don't want me to worry?"
"You know what I mean."
"I'm sorry, I don't."
"Don't tell me that girls like that actually appeal to you."
"Jealous?"
"Hardly," Max shot back defensively. "I just pegged you for a man with higher standards that's all." She couldn't really say why she'd chosen to share her opinion. No harm in giving the guy a little warning, right?
"You've pegged me for a lot of things. ~ Shawn Kirsten Maravel

Each morning she reminded herself that life was a gift, something she'd learned from Pops. Each day was a present to be opened and relished. So today she'd cherish the gift. ~ Heather Burch

Pantheism, seeing the natural world as divine, is a very different thing than seeing divine God present in all things ~ Ann Voskamp

You'll lose your reader if you are vague, not clear, and not present. We love details, personal connections, stories. ~ Natalie Goldberg

Son unas cualquieras, she mutters. Nobodies. No culture, no family life, illiterates, she means. The kind of people who make her cross to the other side of the street if she meets them in the dark on payday. They're her worst nightmare of what a Latin girl can become in the United States. Their big hoop earrings and plucked eyebrows, their dark lips painted like those stars in the old black-and-white movies, their tight T-shirts that show too much curve and invite boys' touches. ~ Meg Medina

I like real art. It's difficult to define 'real' but it is the best word for describing what I like to get out of art and what the best art has. It has the ability to convince you that it's present - that it's there. You could say it's authentic ... but real is actually a better word, broad as it may be. ~ Frank Stella

And Christ, through His own salvific suffering, is very much present in every human suffering, and can act from within that suffering by the powers of His Spirit of truth, His consoling spirit. ~ Pope John Paul II

Utopia's value lies not in its relation to present practice but in its relation to a possible future. Its "practical" use is to overstep the immediate reality to depict a condition whose clear desirability draws us on, like a magnet. ~ Krishan Kumar

I love stories, and as I got older, I realized how important what happened yesterday is to how you try to make your present better. ~ Derek Waters

May your P&L account of deeds for humanity be in profits; for you have to present the your Balance Sheet on the Judgment Day. ~ Vikrmn

She had no tears this morning. She had wept them all away last night, and now she felt that dry-eyed morning misery, which is worse than the first shock, because it has the future in it as well as the present. Every morning to come, as far as her imagination could stretch, she would have to get up and feel that the day would have no joy for her. For there is no despair so absolute as that which comes with the first moments of our first great sorrow, when we have not yet known what it is to have suffered and be healed, to have despaired and to have recovered hope. ~ George Eliot

I am a recluse at present & do nothing but write & read & read & write ~ Katherine Mansfield

I learned that dying is just a part of our journey of life. We are all on this journey and dying is a part of it for each of us. That does not mean that hope is hone. Hope just changes to a very realistic, practical hope ... Sometimes hope becomes more beautiful than ever in our lives because it is about hope for the present moment and hope that is natural, such as, 'I hope the sun shines today'. ~ Joyce Hutchinson

People may assume 'The Act of Killing' is a historical documentary about what happened in 1965. But our purpose was to expose a present-day regime of fear for what it is. ~ Joshua Oppenheimer

Accustom yourself to the belief that death is of no concern to us, since all good and evil lie in sensation and sensation ends with death. Therefore the true belief that death is nothing to us makes a mortal life happy, not by adding to it an infinite time, but by taking away the desire for immortality. For there is no reason why the man who is thoroughly assured that there is nothing to fear in death should find anything to fear in life. So, too, he is foolish who says that he fears death, not because it will be painful when it comes, but because the anticipation of it is painful; for that which is no burden when it is present gives pain to no purpose when it is anticipated. Death, the most dreaded of evils, is therefore of no concern to us; for while we exist death is not present, and when death is present we no longer exist. It is therefore nothing either to the living or to the dead since it is not present to the living, and the dead no longer are. ~ Epicurus

There was no response. Soon afterward, a skiff flying the Spanish flag approached the Charleston. Two Spanish officers came aboard and apologized for not having returned the American "salute" because they had no gunpowder left in their arsenal. It turned out that they had not been resupplied for months and did not know the United States and Spain were at war. The next morning an American lieutenant went ashore. At 10:15 he handed the Spanish commandant a message demanding surrender of the island within thirty minutes. The commandant retired to his quarters. Twenty-nine minutes later he emerged with a reply. "Being without defenses of any kind and without any means for meeting the present situation," he had written, "I am under the sad necessity of being unable to resist such superior forces and regretfully accede to your demands. ~ Stephen Kinzer

The original paraphernalia for the lottery had been lost long ago, and the black box now resting on the stool had been put into use even before Old Man Warner, the oldest man in town, was born. Mr. Summers spoke frequently to the villagers about making a new box, but no one liked to upset even as much tradition as was represented by the black box. There was a story that the present box had been made with some pieces of the box that had preceded it, the one that had been constructed when the first people settled down to make a village here. Every year, after the lottery, Mr. Summers began talking again about a new box, but every year the subject was allowed to fade off without anything's being done. The black box grew shabbier each year: by now it was no longer completely black but splintered badly along one side to show the original wood color, and in some places faded or stained.

Mr. Martin and his oldest son, Baxter, held the black box securely on the stool until Mr. Summers had stirred the papers thoroughly with his hand. Because so much of the ritual had been forgotten or discarded, Mr. Summers had been successful in having slips of paper substituted for the chips of wood that had been used for generations. Chips of wood, Mr. Summers had argued, had been all very well when the village was tiny, but now that the population was more than three hundred and likely to keep on growing, it was necessary to use something that would fit more easily into he black box. Th ~ Shirley Jackson

Can you imagine Jesus saying, "Believe that I am the only way. Why? Because I said so, that's why! And if you don't believe, then you're going straight to hell!" But isn't that how we present him through our slogans? ~ Brian D. McLaren

Creative power flourishes only when I am living in the present. ~ Brenda Ueland

Utopia is a collective shift of perception away. Abundance is all around us. Only our efforts at tower-building blind us to it, our gaze forever skyward, forever seeking to escape this Earth, this feeling, this moment. ~ Charles Eisenstein

Future leaps from the present, formed by the thought processes of mankind. ~ Stephen Richards

Memory is the keyword which combines past with present, past and future. ~ Elie Wiesel

If we take the time to unravel the surreptitious fragments from the past that are veiled in the muddle and jumble of our memory, we may single out the essentials for the present that might be best shots for the future. (Never looking back again", ) ~ Erik Pevernagie

Extravagance of desire is the fundamental cause which has led the world into its present predicament. Fast rather than slow, more rather than less - this flashy "development" is linked directly to society's impending collapse. ~ Masanobu Fukuoka

Though thou shouldst be going to live three thousand years, and as many times ten thousand years, still remember that no man loses any other life than this which he now lives, nor lives any other than this which he now loses. The longest and shortest are thus brought
to the same. For the present is the same to all, though that which perishes is not the same; and so that which is lost appears to be a mere moment. ~ Marcus Aurelius