Past Quotes

The greatest moment of your life is now.
Not because it's pleasant or happy or easy, but because this moment is the only moment you've got. Every past moment is irretrievably gone. It's never coming back. If you live there, you lose your life.
And the future is always out there somewhere. You can spend an eternity waiting for tomorrow, or worrying about tomorrow. If you live there, you likewise will lose your life.
This moment is God's irreplaceable gift to you. ~ John Ortberg

Over the past several years, all of us as Canadians, and as members of the North American cultural and economic environment, have been to a greater or lesser extent party to a significant attitudinal change towards our culture. ~ Alex Campbell

...if the United States never intended to help, it shouldn't have built up the expectation. The false promise of help was cruel and inexcusable and it would only get worse over time. If a man is drowning and a boat drives past in the distance, the man accepts his death and goes down quietly. If a man is drowning and a boat pulls up beside him, dangles a life jacket, tells the world he wants to help, but then doesn't throw the life jacket, the drowning man dies crying and his family might take a blood oath to take revenge on the boat's crew. This type of anger was already starting to build in Syria and al-Qaeda would capitalize on it. ~ Richard Engel

Nobody can tell you about that sword all that there is to be told of it; for those that know of those paths of Space on which its metals once floated, till Earth caught them one by one as she sailed past on her orbit, have little time to waste on such things as magic and so cannot tell you how the sword was made, and those who know whence poetry is, and the need that man has for song, or know any one of the fifty branches of magic, have little time to waste on such things as science, and so cannot tell you whence its ingredients came. Enough that it was once beyond our Earth and was now here amongst our mundane stones; that it was once but as those stones, and now had something in it such as soft music has; let those that can define it. ~ Lord Dunsany

His life, for years past, had been mainly a succession of resigned adaptations, and he had learned, before dealing practically with his embarrassments, to extract from most of them a small tribute of amusement.
("The Triumph Of The Night") ~ Edith Wharton

Accept the past; embrace the present; consider the future. ~ Russell Eric Dobda

Those who have accepted the facts of my life often find me admirable for surviving, even thriving, in spite of it all. You might think I would find that comforting, but I never have. It creates, or emphasizes, the distance between us. They see triumph over past obstacles, whereas I experience the continuing vulnerability of walking a tightrope. There is no point of completion, no sigh of relief, no victory dance in the end zone. ~ Marla Handy

Over the past decades, students who have blindly followed their passion, without rational analysis of whether their choice of career truly was wise, have been more unhappy with their job choices than those who coupled passion with rationality. ~ Barbara Oakley

I do not like that I allowed my past to close me off. I do not like that I let circumstances rob me of the ability to have a normal relationship with a man, to have friends, to be happy. I do not like it, but I had felt myself powerless against it. ~ Megan Hart

You no longer speak of your old friends, your Council, your home. I fear that you are forgetting them, and forgetting your reason for coming here."

Hunter sighed. "It's difficult to talk about them, they don't belong here. Anyway, I thought you wanted me to give up my old life. Congratulations, you've won."

The Abate smiled sadly. "Perhaps I did, I wanted you to abandon your violent past and adopt our ways. But I see that you are giving up everything and taking on nothing. What are you afraid of George? ~ K.S. Marsden

When I'm triggered, I think, "This will last forever" or "What if this lasts forever?" I get thoughts about how I should give up, run away, hide, protect myself. These thoughts, I cannot change. What I can change is how I respond to them. Will I unconditionally believe these ideas, or will I accept them as side effects of the temporary experience of pain? Will I act on each thought that arises in the burning fire, or will I hold myself gently and say, "It'll be okay. I know it hurts. I love you"? My power lies in these choices. ~ Vironika Tugaleva

We possess nothing certainly except the past ~ Evelyn Waugh

Apology Letter from the Brain
Hey there. I'm sorry. OK? But can I say something? Look. I admit I wasn't perfect. No one is perfect. That's a fact. Speaking of facts, don't you think we all need to take a minute and decide who is right and who is wrong? Every side is different; it's just that my side seems more right. I'm not just saying that because it's my side. I think a lot of other people would agree with me, given the chance. If I upset you in some way, please know that wasn't my intention. I didn't know how sensitive you were. It's obvious I can set you off very easily. That's not an insult; it's just an observation. I think it would help if we talked about this more and argued about who was telling the truth. I would like to see you in person and tell you how the situation has affected me. I may use this opportunity to bring up other times you have hurt me in the past. If possible, I would like to hurt you back. Either way, I want to be in control. Until then, take care. And please, remember I reached out first.
I remain,
THE BRAIN

Apology Letter from the Heart
Hey there. I'm sorry. I've found it hard to tell you this, and I realize my apology may be too little or come too late. It is important for me to let you know that I am sorry for what I did or said or didn't do or say. I was wrong. I make mistakes. I HATE that I made one with you. I'm reaching out because life goes by so fast and I just don't want my one life to go by without expr ~ Amy Poehler

She felt something similar, but worse in a way, about hundreds and hundreds of books she'd read, novels, biographies, occasional books, about music and art - she could remember nothing about them at all, so that it seemed rather pointless even to say that she had read them; such claims were things people set great store by but she hardly supposed they recalled any more than she did. Sometimes a book persisted as a coloured shadow at the edge of sight, as vague and unrecapturable as something seen in the rain from a passing vehicle; looked at directly it vanished altogether. Sometimes there were atmospheres, even the rudiments of a scene; a man in an office looking over Regent's Park, rain in the street outside - a little blurred etching of a situation she would never, could never, trace back to its source in a novel she had read some time, she thought, in the past thirty years. ~ Alan Hollinghurst

PICARD: Did you read that book I gave you? (Wesley reacts, barely concealing a grimace as he recalls.)
WESLEY: Some of it.
PICARD: That's reassuring.
WESLEY: I just don't have much time.
PICARD: (re the book in his hand) There is no greater challenge than the study of philosophy. (Wesley glances over at Picard's book)
WESLEY: William James sure won't be on my Starfleet exams.
PICARD: The important things never will be. Anyone can be trained to deal with technology, and the mechanics of piloting a starship.
WESLEY: But Starfleet Academy--
PICARD: It takes more than just that. Open your mind to the past... to history, art, philosophy. And then... (re: the stars) ...this will mean something.
(Wesley considers this, almost embarrassed as he realizes Picard does truly care about him.)
Then: PICARD (continuing) Just consider James' wisdom: "Philosophy... is not a technical matter... it is our sense of what life honestly means... our individual way of feeling the total push and pressure of the cosmos."
(then) That's what I want for you.

From:
STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION
"Samaritan Snare" #40272-143
Written by Robert L. McCullough ~ Jean-Luc Picard

And as on Tullia's tomb one lamp burned clear,
Unchanged for fifteen hundred year ... '
He repeated the lines to himself, and was desolated to think of all the murdered past. ~ Aldous Huxley

Perhaps once we might be able to sneak a death past him. Immortal, yes, but not indestructible. I saw that when AM withdrew from my mind, and allowed me the exquisite ugliness of returning to consciousness with the feeling of that burning neon pillar still rammed deep into the soft gray brain matter. He withdrew, murmuring to hell with you. And added, brightly, but then you're there, aren't you. ~ Harlan Ellison

For every minute, the future is becoming the past. ~ Thor Heyerdahl

Nothing changes more constantly than the past; for the past that influences our lives does not consist of what actually happened, but of what men believe happened. ~ Gerald W. Johnson

Life isn't in our brain // It flows through our veins.
Just a little cut to drain out the galaxies that keep me up tonight.
Just a little cut and all this goes away. Just a little cut and no more thoughts. No memories. No pain. I mean screw nostalgia.
I don't want it. Take it back! ~ Sijdah Hussain

You forget the life you had before, after awhile. Things you cherish and hold dear are like pearls on a string. Cut the knot and they scatter across the floor, rolling into dark corners never to be found again. So you move on, and eventually you forget what the pearls even looked like. At least, you try. ~ Diana Gabaldon

The night sky is filled brimful as a night sky can be, lit brightly as it is with clusters of planets and pulsating stars and marriages of galaxies, all of it within a wobble of dust and gas and debris unseen. There are the Dippers Little and Big tonight, a lovely Pleiades, and a throbbing red star out like a tiny heart. This is the stuff of which we are made, I say to Son, all that is of us above us. We stand together looking upward, our mouths hung open as if to swallow what's above down and into us. Looking out at the past in its far distance, where from there, he we are not. ~ Susan Froderberg

Indeed, this is an important characteristic of the globalization debate: the tendency toward glorifying all things indigenous even when they deserve to be left in the past. ~ Franklin Foer

the answers lay in flesh and blood, not in a book and not in a report. And so often not even in things corporeal, but in something that couldn't be held and contained and touched. The answers to his questions lay in the murky past and in the emotions hidden there. The ~ Louise Penny

The mutability of the past is the central tenet of Ingsoc. Past events, it is argued, have no objective existance, but survive only in written records and in human memories. The past is whatever the records and the memories agree upon. And since the Party is in full control of all records, and in equally full control of the minds of its members, it follows that the past is whatever the Party chooses to make it. ~ George Orwell

Experienced things that caused you to deemed yourself unworthy. Healing the wounds of the past is one of the biggest and most worthwhile challenges of life. It's important to know when and how you were programed so you can change the program. In doing so is your responsibility no one else's. ~ Oprah Winfrey

The future is usually just like the past- right up to the moment when it isn't. ~ George Will

American Christianity is a story of perpetual upheavals in churches and individual lives. Starting with the extraordinary conversion experience, our lives are motivated by a constant expectation for the Next Big Thing. We're growing bored with the ordinary means of God's grace, attending church week in and week out. Doctrines and disciplines that have shaped faithful Christian witness in the past are often marginalized or substituted with newer fashions or methods. The new and improved may dazzle us for a moment, but soon they have become "so last year". Michael Horton, Ordinary, 16 ~ Michael S. Horton

I am not ashamed of my past. I am not ashamed of my humble beginning. ~ Madam C. J. Walker

I go backwards and forwards, recapturing the past, wondering about the future - and, most unreasonably, I find myself longing for the past more than for the future. ~ Dodie Smith

We no longer live in a mass-media world with a few centralized choke points with just a few editors in charge, operated by commercial entities and governments. There is a new, radically different mode of information and attention flow: the chaotic world of the digitally networked public sphere (or spheres) where ordinary citizens or activists can generate ideas, document and spread news of events, and respond to mass media. This new sphere, too, has choke points and centralization, but different ones than the past. The networked public sphere has emerged so forcefully and so rapidly that it is easy to forget how new it is. Facebook was started in 2004 and Twitter in 2006. The first iPhone, ushering in the era of the smart, networked phone, was introduced in 2007. The wide extent of digital connectivity might blind us to the power of this transformation. It should not. These dynamics are significant social mechanisms, especially for social movements, since they change the operation of a key resource: attention… Attention is oxygen for movements. Without it, they cannot catch fire. ~ Zeynep Tufekci

I am responsible for what I see. I can elect to change all thoughts that hurt. I could see peace instead of THIS. The past is over it can touch me not. This instant is the only time there is. Today I will judge nothing that occurs. I am not the victim of the world I see. I can escape from the world I see by giving up attack thoughts. I am determined to see things differently. I am never upset for the reason I think. Forgiveness is the key to happiness. All that I give I give to myself. ~ Hugh Prather

Man did not address his inquiries to the earth on which he stood until a remarkably late stage in the development of his desire for knowledge. And the answers he received to the questions, "Where do I come from?", "What is man?", although they made him poorer by a few illusions, gave him in compensation a knowledge of his past that is vaster than he could ever have dreamed. For it emerged that the history of life was his history too ... ~ Gustav Heinrich Ralph Von Koenigswald

I tell you," went on Syme with passion, "that every time a train comes in I feel that it has broken past batteries of besiegers, and that man has won a battle against chaos. You say contemptuously that when one has left Sloane Square one must come to Victoria. I say that one might do a thousand things instead, and that whenever I really come there I have the sense of hairbreadth escape. And when I hear the guard shout out the word 'Victoria,' it is not an unmeaning word. It is to me the cry of a herald announcing conquest. It is to me indeed 'Victoria'; it is the victory of Adam. ~ G.K. Chesterton

It doesn't matter who you used to be; what matters is who you decide to be today. You are not your mistakes. You are not your mishaps. You are not your past. You are not your wounds. You can decide differently today and at every moment. Remember that. You are offered a new opportunity with each breath to think, decide, choose and act differently – in a way that supports you in being all that you are capable of being. You are not less than. You are enough. ~ Brittany Josephina

I have it in my mind that classification is a necessary condition of the working of the mental implement but that it is a departure from the objective truth of things, that classification is very serviceable for the practical purposes of life but a very doubtful preliminary to those fine penetrations the philosophical purpose, in its more arrogant moods, demands. All the peculiarities of my way of thinking derive from that.

I submit to you that syllogism is based on classification, that all hard logical reasoning tends to imply and is apt to imply a confidence in the objective reality of classification. Consequently in denying that I deny the absolute validity of logic. Classification and number, which in truth ignore the fine differences of objective realities, have in the past of human thought been imposed upon things. [...] The forceps of our minds are clumsy forceps, and crush the truth a little in taking hold of it.

It was about this difficulty that the mind of Plato played a little inconclusively all his life. For the most part he tended to regard the idea as the something behind reality, whereas it seems to me that the idea is the more proximate and less perfect thing, the thing by which the mind, by ignoring individual differences, attempts to comprehend an otherwise unmanageable number of unique realities. ~ H.G. Wells

While the mind lives in the past and the future, the body lives in the now. ~ Deepak Chopra

There is a past which is gone forever, but there is a future which is still our own. ~ Frederick William Robertson

In the American way of life pleasure involves comfort, convenience, and sexual stimulation. Pleasure, so defined, has little to do with the past and views the future as no more than a repetition of a hedonistically driven present. This market morality stigmatizes others as objects for personal pleasure or bodily stimulation. The reduction of individuals to objects of pleasure is especially evident in the culture industries
television, radio, video, music. Like all Americans, African Americans are influenced greatly by the images of comfort. These images contribute to the predominance of the market-inspired way of life over all others and thereby edge out nonmarket values
love, care, service to others
handed down by preceding generations. The predominance of this way of life among those living in poverty-ridden conditions, with a limited capacity to ward of self-contempt and self-hatred, results in the possible triumph of the nihilistic threat in black America. ~ Cornel West

It is so vast an alleviation to be able to point for another to look at. And then not to talk. To follow the dark paths of the mind and enter the past, to visit books, to brush aside their branches and break off some fruit. ~ Virginia Woolf

On the edge of dreaming when the brain lets go, when it stops its scheming, our blood runs slow... Then the heart speaks clearly of the things it knows, things it brought so dearly at the evening's glow... And a misty sunset fills the west with yellow, gold and scarlet red. The bowl of space a dawn sheds light upon our silky bed. For you I send refreshing rain to wash the past away. A quiet breeze drifts warmly across your tired face. It brings the scents from flower climbs, and leaves without a trace. With vines and newborn stars in our hair...undressed, bronzed platinum we are as summer in your golden church... Like whispers lost at sea...we soar beyond the sky of fire...in harmony within the clash of elements... Together lost and free to claim our each desire. Like leaves we float to earth, once more...forbidden passion, romantic eyes, and heated lips...two burning amber hearts released and drinking slowly mysterious champagne of heaven sweetest rest... ~ Oksana Rus

Out of our deepest memories come the forgotten forms of the past,
given new life by the living sentience of an ancient and eternal forest. ~ Robert Holdstock

I write about modern people who share a deep sense of connection to the mysteries of the past. I find that I understand myself and my world better when I'm able to peer into history as a mirror. ~ Ian Caldwell

Puck swung the cannon around in anger. The nozzle spun and hit Sabrina in the chest. The force was so pawerful she was knocked right off the platform and fell backward off the tower. She saw sky above her and felt the wind in her hair. How ironic, she thought, as she fell to her certain death, that at that moment she would have given anything to be a giant goose again.
Air rushed past Sabrina's ears and suddenly she felt her back tingling again. A moment later she was hanging upside down, inches from the ground. She looked up to find her savior, only to find that her her wasn't a person but a long, furry tail sticking out of the back of her pants. It was wrapped around a beam in the tower a kept her swinging there like a monkey.
Puck floated down to her, his wings flapping softly enough to allow him to hover.
"I bet you think this is hilarious. Look what you did to me with your stupid pranks. I have a tail!" she raged.
Puck's face was trembling. "I'm sorry."
"What?" Sabrina said blankly.
"I almost killed you. I'm sorry, Sabrina," he said, rubbing his eyes on his filthy hoodie. He lifted her off the tower and set her on the ground.
"Since when do you care?" Sabrina said, still stunned by the boy's apology. ~ Michael Buckley

All acts of healing are ultimately our selves healing our Self.
-Ram Dass ~ Ram Dass

… i promised myself never to look into the past
but on perfect summer days i get anxious i want to begin again ~ Laura Villareal

We have paid the police for information in the past. ~ Rebekah Brooks

I haven't taken any new projects in the past years - I told myself, if I cannot live long enough to finish it, I don't want it. ~ I.M. Pei

Every man who is not for us in this prolonged struggle for liberty is responsible for the present degradation of the mothers of the race. It is pitiful to see how few men ever have made our cause their own, but while leaving us to fight our battle alone, they have been unsparing in their criticism of every failure. Of all the battles for liberty in the long past, woman only has been left to fight her own, without help and with all the powers of earth and heaven, human and divine, arrayed against her. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

But did you know that during the past quarter century, no presidential election has been won by more than ten million ballots cast? Yet every federal election during the same time period had at least one hundred million people of voting age who did not bother to vote! ~ Andy Andrews

The heavens were inexhaustible, it had rained every day since the beginning of September and except for a couple of hours I hadn't seen the sun for what would soon be eight months. The streets were deserted apart from a few people who rushed past hugging the walls, in Bergen it was vital to get from A to B as fast as you could. ~ Karl Ove Knausgaard

I think archaeologists are stuck, and we are losing our past at a very rapid rate. Tens of thousands of sites will be lost, and we've only unveiled a tiny percent of the past. ~ Sarah Parcak

A Warrior's Pledge of Purity
By Jason Lee Morgan

I will have faith that God empowers me for purity
I will have faith that God has something better
I will be encouraged by Your faithfulness
I will sharpen my sword today for purity
I will meditate on purity throughout my day
I will strategize for victory, rather than brace for defeat
I will outline the known of my day
That I may prepare for the pitfalls to come
And preemptively guard against what is known
I will pray before I enter battle
I will pray for protection
I will pray for wisdom
I will pray for strength
I will pray for miracles if need be!
I will take my stand by way of escape
As a coward I shall be in the face of impurity
Only my back shall it see
I will bear the strange appearance of downward eyes
That no impure image be stamped within me
I will go out of my way to avoid the face of impurity
I will hurt the feelings of others if need be, to preserve my purity before You
I will not long for the past, but dwell on what is pure
I will not place others above You as my reason for purity
I will recall Your holiness daily
I will love You with Christ-like love
And sacrifice what is necessary to glorify You
I will recite this daily, that I do not forget Thee ~ Jason Lee Morgan

But you get past that and realize you have to let go of what you think you want. There'll be plenty of time for that later. Right now, go and be with that baby. Just play with this beautiful little boy. ~ Paul Reiser

When you forgive, you immerse yourself in healing waters. ~ Stephen Richards

The past doesn't exist except as a memory, a mental story, and though past events aren't changeable, your stories about them are. You can act now to transform the way you tell the story of your past, ultimately making it a stalwart protector of your future. ~ Martha Beck

I don't know. They could put up a warning sign or something. Hello. Welcome to Hindstrap. We will murder you in the night and eat your bloody face if you stay past sunset. Try the pies. Martna Maily makes them fresh daily. ~ Robert Jordan

The past is like an invisible prison, no one has the keys to set you free from It except yourself ~ David Mabasa

Winners live in the present tense. People who come up short are consumed with future or past. I want to be living in the now. ~ Alex Rodriguez

The future doesn't exist. It hasn't happened yet. The past doesn't exist. It has already happened. ~ John Daido Loori

Over the past two years, the House has passed more than 50 measures focused on stimulating the economy and expanding opportunities for American workers. The tax relief provisions in this package have been an important part of our pro-growth agenda. ~ Roger Wicker

Often, it was only the bold, fearless, risky action that had any hope of circumventing impending doom, as if Fate was amused by the colorfully unexpected, and while she was laughing, one might slip changes past the pernicious bitch. ~ Karen Marie Moning

Learn from the past, but don't be a prisoner of it. ~ Jamie Larbi

Uselessness
Let mine not be the saddest fate of all,
To live beyond my greater self; to see
My faculties decaying, as the tree
Stands stark and helpless while its green leaves fall
Let me hear rather the imperious call,
Which all men dread, in my glad morning time,
And follow death ere I have reached my prime,
Or drunk the strengthening cordial of life's gall.
The lightning's stroke or the fierce tempest blast
Which fells the green tree to the earth to-day
Is kinder than the calm that lets it last,
Unhappy witness of its own decay.
May no man ever look on me and say,
'She lives, but all her usefulness is past. ~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox

I win by taking risks. By standing out. Mom hates how I ride Tucker right past the judge as many times as possible in a class. She says it's showboating and it's tacky. Some judges don't like it. Long ago, though, I decided I'd rather win being me than lose by playing it safe. ~ Carolyn Lee Adams

In 1973, America imported 30 percent of its crude oil needs. Today, that number has doubled to more than 60 percent. Gas prices are as high as they are now in part because we've had no comprehensive national energy policy for the past few decades. ~ Gary Miller

Borrowing other people's culture and adopting other people's way of life does destroy nation's self-respect which is the greatest asset a true citizen can enjoy more than food and clothes, more than all amenities and more than military glory. You can adopt a system of government and a way of life, but can you adopt the past history, travail and tradition out of which that system of government and a way of life were evolved? Can we adopt King Charles, King John, Magna Carta and civil wars and Cromwell as our own? They can always say "We evolved a system and a way of life", but we must always sing in refrain, "We borrowed them". Adopting a culture is not the same as adopting the use of a gadget. It is like tying other peoples' mangoes to your tree, while plucking and throwing away your own. How absurd! ~ Manasa Rao

History is a light that illuminates the past,
and a key that unlocks the door to the future. ~ Runoko Rashidi

I don't know why but I love this kind of project, when it's a little difficult and when you have a history. The beginning of the story of viticulture was in the Middle East, and it was a different generation than the science and logistics of today. My passion is to go into the past to make wine. Wine is something cultural, not only something to drink. I always try to find the identity of the place. ~ Stephane Derenoncourt

We're all from the past and we're all from the future, depending on the point of reference. ~ Cuthbert Soup

The present moment is really all that we have. The only place you can really love another person is in the present. Love in the past is a memory. Love in the future is a fantasy. To be really alive, love - or any other experience - must take place in the present. ~ Jack Kornfield

You don't talk to yourself, you talk to your past with the result of no future. ~ Meir Ezra

This time when she picked up her paints, she didn't think, she just painted. It was like opening the door onto a storm. The canvas was her doorway and the paint all the thunder and lightning, the wild pain-filled sky caught inside her. ~ Michelle Frost

Don't let him push you around. You got this," he said. "You get on the bull, and you ride until he sees who the master is. Relentless. Unforgiving. Merciless. You know the drill. The only place the broken past has in our present, is the place we give it. So, don't give it, and don't let him give it. ~ Lucian Bane

I don't believe in looking past anybody - I wouldn't look past the Little Sisters of the Poor after they stayed up all night. ~ Al McGuire

It's a Little Leaguers game that major leaguers play extraordinarily well, a game that excites us throughout adulthood. The crack of the bat and the scent of the horsehide on leather bring back our own memories that have been washed away with the sweat and tears of summers long gone ... even as the setting sun pushes the shadows past home plate. ~ Mario Cuomo

You see, the past is what you make of it. You can use it to hurt yourself or others or you can use it to make yourself strong. ~ Michael Connelly

Big events, small, mundane moments of the day–it doesn't matter; the past will find a way to squeeze into the present–if you let it. ~ Laura Miller

It is not even accurate to say that Christianity eventually broke away from Judaism. It is more accurate to say that, out of that matrix of biblical Judaism and that maelstrom of late Second-Temple Judaism, two great traditions eventually emerged: early Christianity and rabbinic Judaism. Each claimed exclusive continuity with the past, but in truth each was as great a leap and as valid a development from that common ancestry as was the other. They are not child and parent; they are two children of the same mother. So, of course, were Cain and Abel. ~ John Dominic Crossan

I am afraid that I do not believe that any body of men can have enough knowledge of the past, the present and the future to establish "development priorities" which presumably means procuring some developments as being good and prohibiting others as being bad. ~ John James Cowperthwaite

We must stop listening to voices from the past
and we must stop immediately.
Father Tim ~ Jan Karon

I knew this for a fact. Little by little, the ache to see him, to hear him would disappear. Little by little I'd forget how his arms felt, how his fingers felt, how his lips felt..the sound of his voice, the intensity of his gaze, all of it. Trace by trace it would slip from my mind, recede into foggy memory. The painful haze that dulled my present would melt into the past. Maybe not all the way, maybe there would be a few scars. Maybe I'd be different, but I'd be me again. Little by little. ~ Jennifer DeLucy

The Recent Past

Perhaps we ought to feel with more imagination.
As today the sky 70 degrees above zero with lines falling
The way September moves a lace curtain to be near a pear,
The oddest device can't be usual. And that is where
The pejorative sense of fear moves axles. In the stars
There is no longer any peace, emptied like a cup of coffee
Between the blinding rain that interviews.

You were my quintuplets when I decided to leave you
Opening a picture book the pictures were all of grass
Slowly the book was on fire, you the reader
Sitting with specs full of smoke exclaimed
How it was a rhyme for "brick" or "redder."
The next chapter told all about a brook.
You were beginning to see the relation when a tidal wave
Arrived with sinking ships that spelled out "Aladdin."
I thought about the Arab boy in his cave
But the thoughts came faster than advice.
If you knew that snow was a still toboggan in space
The print could rhyme with "fallen star. ~ John Ashbery

So much of our early gladness vanishes utterly from our memory: we can never recall the joy with which we laid our heads on our mother's bosom or rode on our father's back in childhood. Doubtless that joy is wrought up into our nature, as the sunlight of long-past mornings is wrought up in the soft mellowness of the apricot, but it is gone for ever from our imagination, and we can only BELIEVE in the joy of childhood. ~ George Eliot

Don't be afraid to let go of your past…
…it's only but a distraction to your present. ~ Abdulazeez Henry Musa

I love having first-time experiences. When you're past the age of 20 or so, there are less and less first-time experiences. ~ Justine Bateman

Daily life took as much as she had. The future was sunset; the past something to leave behind. And if it didn't stay behind, well, you might have to stomp it out. ~ Toni Morrison

All I trust is the past. Things that have ended can't betray me. ~ Novala Takemoto

A man who let himself decline because he could not see any future goal found himself occupied with retrospective thoughts. In a different connection, we have already spoken of the tendency there was to look into the past, to help make the present, with all its horrors, less real. But in robbing the present of its reality there lay a certain danger. It became easy to overlook the opportunities to make something positive of camp life, opportunities ~ Viktor E. Frankl

The past is an illusion. You must learn to live in the present and accept yourself for what you are now. What you lack in flexibility and agility you must make up with knowledge and constant practice. ~ Bruce Lee

Ludwik Szatera was a passionate lover of nostalgia. He could never come to terms with the eternal passage of men, objects and events. Each moment inexorably turning into the past was to him precious, invaluable, and he witnessed its passing with a sense of inexpressible regret. ~ Stefan Grabinski

Last semester was intense," I said to Dad.

"Intense?" he echoed, picking up my file. "Let's see. On your first day at Hecate, you were attacked by a werewolf. You insulted a teacher, which resulted in semester-long cellar duty with one Archer Cross. According to the notes, the two of you became 'close.' Apparently close enough for you to see the mark of L'Occhio di Dio on his chest.

I flushed at that, and felt Mom's arm tighten around me. Over the past six months, I'd filled her in on a lot of the story with Archer, but not all of it.

Specifically, the whole me-making-out-in-the-cellar-with-a-murderous-warlock-working-with-the-Eye-part. ~ Rachel Hawkins

Repentance is more than just sorrow for the past; repentance is a change of mind and heart, a new life of denying self and serving the Savior as king in self's place. ~ J.I. Packer

I owe a debt to you," his low voice hissed at Shion's ear. "Four years ago, you saved my life. I'm paying back that debt. That's all."

"Then you've paid enough. Too much, even." Shion gripped Nezumi's wrist to pry it away from his collar. But Nezumi's taut muscles showed no signs of relaxing.

"Let go."

"Make me, little boy."

"I'll bite your nose off." Shion clicked his teeth. There was a split second of hesitation. Shion didn't miss it. He slid a hand around the back of Nezumi's neck. "Biting noses off is my specialty."

"Huh? Wait a second, that's dirty―"

"I forgot to mention, over these past four years, I've also learned how to fight. ~ Atsuko Asano

You, too, were supposed to be a one-night stand. A quick fix. A conquest. A ten-line poem in my grand anthology of lovers.
But you altered the narrative, you marked your territory on my timeline o that as I look back, I find I can neatly divide my more recent past into two unequal halves: before you and after. ~ Rosalyn D'Mello

Pastor Smith did not have the religious constitution needed to provide salvation for any of us who'd had a hand in this tragic event. We had put on the armour of God, and there was no undoing what we had done. My faith, my belief in myself as a good citizen, everything I had thought was truth was scattered to the wind, and no one on this earth could put that to rights. Things weren't as simple as living and dying. I understood that now. ~ Cheryl R Cowtan

I think of published poets that you could know of...I think [Rainer Maria Rilke] probably has the most great published poems of any poet [...] but Rilke himself was an asshole. If you look at his biography, he was probably misogynist; he was a liar, a cheat; he was a terrible father; he was selfish; he put people down; he had no consideration for anyone [...] yet, he transcends that in his greatest poems. There's that ineffable, spiritual quality - that he himself couldn't reach! But somewhere underneath that reptilian exterior, that asshole exterior of Rainer Maria Rilke, there was some good that came through – like these little sunbursts coming through clouds – that had that moment. And he'd write the Duino Elegies, he'd write the New Poems, and somewhere, that came through.
And that's an amazing thing: you can have a lot of great people who are great individuals, who are loving and caring – and they can't do that. And that's not to say that their lives are meaningless, but they will never be able to affect anyone past the propinquity of their existence. They are never going to be able to affect someone in China; they are never going to be able to affect someone in 2132 the way Rilke can.
And that specialness needs to be acknowledged; that specialness needs to be upheld; it needs to be rewarded, and people need to say, 'Goddamn – that's a good thing! It's a good thing that people make art! ~ Dan Schneider

.....I'm certain I asked for a cowboy one December past--
For I wanted the excitement of pioneers to last;
I ached to sing with a fiddle, speak with a drawl and twang;
I surely requested John Wayne to be part of my gang.

Of course I dreamed of a cowboy in those Yuletides of yore--
For I wanted that ace, that corral fighter, that scout roar;
I ached for the authentic frontier hero of the West;
I surely requested the sacred battleground's finest.

I did pray Santa'd give me a cowboy some time ago--
For I wanted a legend in denim wrangler for beau;
I ached to be rounded up safely by my saddled knight;
I surely requested I be prospected, mined, settled right...


-----excerpted from the poem 'A Cowboy For Christmas' in the book FROM GUAM TO CROWN CITY CORONADO (THANKS TO HERMANN, MISSOURI): A JOURNEY IN POESY, by Mariecor Ruediger ~ Mariecor Ruediger

Try listening to yourself sometime, alone in a transient room in a strange town. The worst is when you draw a blank, and the ash-blonde ghosts of the past carry on long twittering long-distance calls with your inner ear, and there's no way to hang up. ~ Ross Macdonald

Make peace with your past so you don't mess up the present! ~ Marcia Casar Friedman