Repeating The Past Quotes

When I left class that day, I did not tell them what I myself was just beginning to discover: how similar our own fate was becoming to Gatsby's. He wanted to fulfill his dream by repeating the past, and in the end he discovered that the past was dead, the present a sham, and there was no future. Was this not similar to our revolution, which had come in the name of our collective past and had wrecked our lives in the name of dream? ~ Azar Nafisi

We often get into ruts, on treadmills, caught up in patterns and habits that aren't useful. We don't stop to ask, what can I learn from this week that will keep next week from essentially being a repeat of the same? ~ Stephen R. Covey

The day we forget the horror, Sam, we will repeat it. Never forget your past. It will make you less human, less than human. ~ Katherine Reay

Pinch of pain gives you tear!
Repeat!
Pinch of pain gives you strength! Repeat!
A pinch of pain gives you strength to overcome the big pain. ~ Ar. Harpreet Singh

It is also about loss, about the perishability of dreams once they are transformed into hard reality. It is the longing, its immateriality, that makes the dream pure.

What we in Iran had in common with Fitzgerald was this dream that became our obsession and took over our reality, this terrible, beautiful dream, impossible in its actualization, for which any amount of violence might be justified or forgiven. This was what we had in common, although we were not aware of it then.

Dreams, Mr Nyazi, are perfect ideals, complete in themselves. How can you impose them on a constantly changing, imperfect, incomplete reality? You would become a Humbert, destroying the object of your dream; or a Gatsby, destroying yourself.

When I left the class that day, I did not tell them what I myself was just beginning to discover: how similar our own fate was becoming to Gatsby's. He wanted to fulfill his dream by repeating the past, and in the end he discovered that the past was dead, the present a sham, and there was no future. Was this not similar to our revolution, which had come in the name of our collective past and had wrecked our lives in the name of a dream? ~ Azar Nafisi

was driving up S 25th St., this afternoon, and saw this saying on a sign: "Look at life through the windshield, not the rear-view mirror."

Well, I pondered on that a bit. I sense a bit of danger with the idea of not checking out the rear view mirror on occasion. Like driving, it is important we know what has been and what could be coming from behind.

Some old cliches are around because they are true..."If you forget the past, you're bound to repeat it."...."Be prepared"... "Keep your eye on the prize."

Reflections ... Presence ... Aspirations ... ~ F. M. Proctor 'Madame Mim'

It is a highly valued function of society to prevent changes in the rules of the many games it embraces ... Deviancy, however, is the very essence of culture. Whoever merely follows the script, merely repeating the past, is culturally impoverished. There are variations in the quality of deviation; not all divergence from the past is culturally significant. Any attempt to vary from the past in such a way as to cut the past off, causing it to be forgotten, has little cultural importance. Greater significance attaches to those variations that bring the tradition into view in a new way, allowing the familiar to be seen as unfamiliar, as requiring a new appraisal of all that we have been- and therefore all that we are. Cultural deviation does not return us to the past, but continues what was begun but not finished in the past ... Properly speaking, a culture does not have a tradition; it is a tradition. ~ James P. Carse

Quit living as if the purpose of life is to arrive safely at death. Set God-sized goals. Pursue God-ordained passions. Go after a dream that is destined to fail without divine intervention. Keep asking questions. Keep making mistakes. Keep seeking God. Stop pointing out problems and become part of the solution. Stop repeating the past and start creating the future. Stop playing it safe and start taking risks. Expand your horizons. Accumulate experiences. Enjoy the journey. Find every excuse you can to celebrate everything you can. Live like today is the first day and last day of your life. Don't let what's wrong with you keep you from worshiping what's right with God. Burn sinful bridges. Blaze new trails. Don't let fear dictate your decisions. Take a flying leap of faith. Quit holding out. Quit holding back. Go all in with God. Go all out for God. ~ Mark Batterson

At some point, most of us stop living out of imagination and start living out of memory. Instead of creating the future, we start repeating the past. Instead of living by faith, we live by logic. Instead of going after our dreams, we stop circling Jericho. But it doesn't have to be that way. ~ Mark Batterson

In this paper I propose the existence of two distinct presentations of DID, a Stable and an Active one. While people with Stable DID struggle with their traumatic past, with triggers that re-evoke that past and with the problems of daily functioning with severe dissociation, people with Active DID are, in addition, also engaged in a life of current, on-going involvement in abusive relationships, and do not respond to treatment in the same way as other DID patients. The paper observes these two proposed DID presentations in the context of other trauma-based disorders, through the lens of their attachment relationship. It proposes that the type, intensity and frequency of relational trauma shape - and can thus predict - the resulting mental disorder.
- Through the lens of attachment relationship: Stable DID, Active DID and other trauma-based mental disorders ~ Adah Sachs

So this anchoring in some way, in some important way in the past without repeating the past, but on the basis of the past building something new: that is what is important. ~ Gunther Schuller

If they weren't nice to you when you were growing up, you'll probably be attracted to partners who aren't nice to you now. ~ Kate McGahan

The job of each generation is to solve more problems than they create and to lift up the next generation to be better than the last. Simply repeating the past does neither. ~ L.R. Knost

Our minds tend to race ahead into the future or replay the past, but our bodies are always in the present moment. ~ Sharon Salzberg

I have been raising money for the past 14 years for diabetes research. ~ John Ratzenberger

Sometimes people have to compensate for the past, forgetting about the future. ~ Alen Sargsyan

When the Past Never Existed
Then There Was No Life. ~ Petra Hermans

You are either in here or you are in nowhere, because both the past and the future are nowhere; past is dead, future is not born yet! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

Let us say, the present is where we live, while the past is where we dream. ~ John Banville

One thing that tells me a company is in trouble is when they tell me how good they were in the past. Same with countries. You don't want to forget your identity. I am glad that you were great in the fourteenth century, but that was then and this is now. When memories exceed dreams, the end is near. The hallmark of a truly successful organization is the willingness to abandon what made it successful and start fresh."
In societies that have more memories than dreams, too many people are spending too many days looking backward. They see dignity, affirmation, and self-worth not by mining the present but by chewing on the past. And even that is usually not a real past but an imagined and adorned past. Indeed, such societies focus all their imagination on making that imagined past even more beautiful than it ever was, and then they cling to it…, rather than imagining a better future and acting on that. ~ Thomas L. Friedman

What I may call the messages of Brave New World, but it is possible to make people contented with their servitude. I think this can be done. I think it has been done in the past. I think it could be done even more effectively now because you can provide them with bread and circuses and you can provide them with endless amounts of distractions and propaganda. ~ Aldous Huxley

Have you also learned that secret from the river; that there is no such thing as time? That the river is everywhere at the same time, at the source and at the mouth, at the waterfall, at the ferry, at the current, in the ocean and in the mountains, everywhere and that the present only exists for it, not the shadow of the past nor the shadow of the future. ~ Hermann Hesse

Everybody needs a place they can go to rest, sheltered from the past and the future. A place you can live one moment at a time. ~ Carol Orsborn

The past will always be there but that doesn't mean you have to be. ~ Eric Shoars

I loved it, I loved the feeling, it was my favorite feeling, but it never led to anything good, and the day after or the days after, it was as closely associated with boundless excess as with stupidity, which I hated with a passion. But when I was in that state, the future did not exist, nor the past, only the moment and that was why I wanted to be in it so much, for my world, in all of its unbearable banality, was radiant. ~ Karl Ove Knausgaard

The past was nothing to her; offered no lesson which she was willing to heed. The future was a mystery which she never attempted to penetrate. The present alone was significant. ~ Kate Chopin

Knowledge of revelation cannot interfere with ordinary knowledge. Likewise, ordinary knowledge cannot interfere with knowledge of revelation. There is no scientific theory which is more favorable to the truth of revelation than any other theory. It is disastrous for theology if theologians prefer one scientific view to others on theological grounds. And it was humiliating for theology when theologians were afraid of new theories for religious reasons, trying to resist them as long as possible, and finally giving in when resistance had become impossible. This ill-conceived resistance of theologians from the time of Galileo to the time of Darwin was one of the causes of the split between religion and secular culture in the past centuries.

The same situation prevails with regard to historical research. Theologians need not be afraid of any historical conjecture, for revealed truth lies in a dimension where it can neither be confirmed nor negated by historiography. Therefore, theologians should not prefer some results of historical research to others on theological grounds, and they should not resist results which finally have to be accepted if scientific honesty is not to be destroyed, even if they seem to undermine the knowledge of revelation. Historical investigations should neither comfort nor worry theologians. Knowledge of revelation, although it is mediated primarily through historical events, does not imply factual assertions, and it is therefore not exposed to ~ Paul Tillich

Memories are the key not to the past, but to the future. ~ Corrie Ten Boom

The city of Gloucester, by ancient custom, presented a lamprey pie to the sovereign at Christmas time, as a token of loyalty. Lampreys are scaleless freshwater sucker-fish resembling eels, desirable in the past for their oily, gamey flesh. The tradition of gifting lamprey pies to the royal family continued until the end of Queen Victoria's reign, but was revived for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953 when a 42-pound pie was cooked by the RAF catering crops. ~ Janet Clarkson

Do not let the future be held hostage by the past ~ Neal A. Maxwell

Being here is a kind of spiritual surrender. We see only what the others see. The thousands who were here in the past, those who will come in the future. We've agreed to be part of a collective perception. This literally colors our vision. A religious experience in a way, like all tourism. ~ Don DeLillo

Like it or not, we all carry the past of our country. The unresolved conflicts of race and class lay coiled, ready to erupt, unless we set our minds to an honest reckoning with that past and a search for solutions grounded in genuine truth and justice. Unlike the cursing anonymous voice on a telephone, or the menacing face, or the billy club that split John Lewis's head in Selma, Alabama, at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in 1965, implicit bias is hard to see; implicit bias is a silent snake that slinks around in ways we don't notice. ~ Mitch Landrieu

Repentance is a one-faced Janus, ever looking to the past. ~ Letitia Elizabeth Landon

The lie is the future, one may venture to say [ ... ]. To tell the truth is, on the contrary, to say what is or what will have been and it would instead prefer the past. ~ Jacques Derrida

Youth faces forward, impatient of the present, panting to anticipate the future. But we who have crossed a certain sad meridian, we turn our gaze backward,and tell the relentless gods what we would sacrifice to recover a little of the past... ~ Henry Harland

according to a brief perusal of women writer's comments online over the past few days, men are: overly confident, predatory, helpless, psychopaths, terrified of women, fascists, the reason why the world is in this mess, literally so stupid, and the problem here. Of course what these women really mean is that they themselves are not overly confident, not predatory, not helpless, and on down the line. It's just easier to say that men are these things, than that you are not these things. People would rightly become suspicious if you suddenly started going on about how amazing you were. They'd start looking for proof you weren't. But by attributing these negative behaviors and traits to your "opposite" group, it's an easy, criticism-proof way of saying, "I would never behave like this, I would never be like this." And ~ Jessa Crispin

It is a time when one's spirit is subdued and sad, one knows not why; when the past seems a storm-swept desolation, life a vanity and a burden, and the future but a way to death. It is a time when one is filled with vague longings; when one dreams of flight to peaceful islands in the remote solitudes of the sea, or folds his hands and says, What is the use of struggling, and toiling and worrying any more? let us give it all up. ~ Mark Twain

Tristan was silent for a few moments, looking at the leaves before them. "Life isn't about the past and the future. It's about today." He paused. "It's about five minutes from now and two seconds ago. It's moments, you know? Not years. Years aren't what define us. ~ Chelsea Fine

He had understood long ago that the past was no better than the present. That was as plain as day. One had to try to escape, to wrestle free from every era, so as not to be devoured by it. ~ Lyudmila Ulitskaya

We have to fight the past to survive. ~ Pierre Boulez

The past is an anchor with suffering written on the rope. I don't live there now. I am cutting myself free. ~ Mark Millar

The only thing simple about the past is that it's not now. ~ Larry Poons

In general, 'Buddha' means 'Awakened One', someone who has awakened from the sleep of ignorance and sees things as they really are. A Buddha is a person who is completely free from all faults and mental obstructions. There are many people who have become Buddhas in the past, and many people will become Buddhas in the future. ~ Geshe Kelsang Gyatso

He who does not know the past can never understand the present, and he certainly can do nothing for the future. ~ John G. Diefenbaker

Of course, I didn't become an architect, but later on in Iran, I had a lot of contact and discussions with architects because Iran was developing, and I felt we shouldn't destroy the past and copy completely the West, which is the problem in developing countries. ~ Farah Diba

The past plummeting towards me like a vulture-dropped hand to become what-purifies-and-sets-me-free, because now as I look up there is a feeling at the back of my head and after that there is only a tiny but infinite moment of utter clarity while I tumble forwards to prostrate myself before my parents' funeral pyre, a minuscule but endless instant of knowing, before I am stripped of past present memory time shame and love, a fleeting but also timeless explosion in which I bow my head yes I acquiesce yes in the necessity of the blow, and then I am empty and free, because all the Saleems go pouring out of me, from the baby who appeared in jumbo-sized front-page baby-snaps to the eighteen-year-old with his filthy dirty love, pouring out goes shame and guilt and wanting-to-please and needing-to-be-loved and determined-to-find-a-historical-role and growing-too-fast, I am free ~ Salman Rushdie

Palaeontology is the Aladdin's lamp of the most deserted and lifeless regions of the earth; it touches the rocks and there spring forth in orderly succession the monarchs of the past and the ancient river streams and savannahs wherein they flourished. The rocks usually hide their story in the most difficult and inaccessible places. ~ Roy Chapman Andrews

Brands are either built on reruns or coming attractions. The future has no road map while the past does. Creating a brand that blazes new trails can sometimes be bumpy but will also allow you to be the first to discover something new, something meaningful and something that makes others ask, "Why didn't we think of that?" Be very scared of "old tricks" and build a spirit of innovation. It's the "old tricks" that have the highest risk, not doing something bold. ~ David Brier

Dolmens constantly remind us to live in harmony with nature, to live within our needs and not in our greed. It reminds us that we should keep on helping everyone in need; not only those who are right in front of our eyes, but everyone and everything that are interconnected in time and space. Only abstract consequences of our good deeds and our kind actions continue to exist as soul and connect us with the past, present and upcoming generations. Rest of it will be molten into nothingness! ~ Kandathil Sebastian

It's not the past if it's not finished. ~ Caroline Kepnes

After wearing and wasting her palpitating heart with every engine of regret that lonely inexperience could devise, common sense had illumined her. She felt that she would do well to be useful again - to taste anew sweet independence at any price. The past was past; whatever it had been, it was no more at hand. Whatever its consequences, time would close over them; ~ Thomas Hardy

Every advantage in the past is judged in the light of the final issue. ~ Demosthenes

I fight everyday to not let the past overtake me. Sometimes I win, sometimes it does. ~ Richelle Mead

No doubt Western civilization has in the past been full of wars and revolutions, and the national elements in our culture, even when they were ignored, always provided an unconscious driving force of passion and aggressive self-assertion. ~ Christopher Dawson

Leave the past in the past, tomorrows not promised and Todays just a gift
i guess thats why its the present ~ Joe Budden

I have stuff I'm interested in working on, and I'd rather work on what excites me than complete projects from the past that I've grown bored with. ~ Chester Brown

We have the power to build a new consensus, which rejects killing as a method for achieving results. And we can look forward to a time when the wholesale slaughter of animals in shelters is viewed as a cruel aberration of the past. We have a choice. ~ Nathan Winograd

The present is the revenge of the past. ~ E.J. Koh

History, in illuminating the past, illuminates the present, and in illuminating the present, illuminates the future. ~ Benjamin Cardozo

I'm looking at all this and I'm thinking that one day I won't be here to see it and I know I'll miss it, even if I won't have a heartbeat to miss anything. I miss it now for the-days-when, the way I miss places I've never traveled to or things I've never done." "What things have you never done?" "You're young and you're very handsome - how could you possibly understand?" He removed his arm. He lived in a future that wouldn't be his to live in and longed for a past that hadn't been his either. There was no turning back and no going forward. I felt for him. ~ Andre Aciman