Same Old Story Quotes

It is generally forgotten that our guarantees of religious freedom were designed to protect precisely those who were not members of established denominations, but rather such (then) screwball and subversive individuals as Quakers, Shakers, Levellers, and Anabaptists. There is little question that those who use cannabis or other psychedelics with religious intent are now members of a persecuted religion which appears to the rest of society as a grave menace to "mental health," as distinct from the old-fashioned "immortal soul." But it's the same old story. ~ Alan W. Watts

At the point where he, today's Ivan Ilyich, began to emerge, all the pleasures that had seemed so real melted away now before his eyes and turned into something trivial and often disgusting.
And the further he was from childhood, the nearer he got to the present day, the more trivial and dubious his pleasures appeared. It started with law school. That had retained a little something that was really good: there was fun, there was friendship, there was hope. But in the last years the good times had become more exceptional. Then, at the beginning of his service with the governor, some good times came again: memories of making love to a woman. Then it became all confused, and the good times were not so many. After that there were fewer still; the further he went the fewer there were.
Marriage. . .an accident and such a disappointment, and his wife's bad breath, and all that sensuality and hypocrisy! And the deadlines of his working life, and those money worries, going on for a year, two years, ten, twenty - always the same old story. And the longer it went on the deadlier it became.
'It's as if I had been going downhill when I thought I was going uphill. That's how it was. In society's opinion I was heading uphill, but in equal measure life was slipping away from me...And now it's all over. Nothing left but to die! ~ Leo Tolstoy

The Arab world has done nothing to help the Palestinian refugees they created when they attacked Israel in 1948. It's called the 'Palestinian refugee problem.' This is one of the best tricks that the Arabs have played on the world, and they have used it to their great advantage when fighting Israel in the forum of public opinion. This lie was pulled off masterfully, and everyone has been falling for it ever since. First you tell people to leave their homes and villages because you are going to come in and kick out the Jews the day after the UN grants Israel its nationhood. You fail in your military objective, the Jews are still alive and have more land now than before, and you have thousands of upset, displaced refugees living in your country because they believed in you. So you and the UN build refugee camps that are designed to last only five years and crowd the people in, instead of integrating them into your society and giving them citizenship.
After a few years of overcrowding and deteriorating living conditions, you get the media to visit and publish a lot of pictures of these poor people living in the hopeless, wretched squalor you have left them in. In 1967 you get all your cronies together with their guns and tanks and planes and start beating the war drums. Again the same old story: you really are going to kill all the Jews this time or drive them into the sea, and everyone will be able to go back home, take over what the Jews have developed, and live in a Jew- ~ Brigitte Gabriel

It's still the same old story,
A fight for love and glory,
A case of do or die!
The world will always welcome lovers
As time goes by. ~ Herman Hupfeld

History is a raw onion sandwich, it just repeats, it burps. We've seen it again and again this year. Same old story, Same old oscillation between tyranny and rebellion, war and peace, prosperity and impoverishment ~ Julian Barnes

As long as 'Pearl Harbor' stays in the past, it's perfect; when it wretchedly changes gears in the late going, it becomes the wrong kind of same old story: Hollywood stupidity and callowness, writ large across the sky. ~ Stephen Hunter

It's the same old story, all you think about is money. ~ Rafael Nadal

Do you realize,' Dr. Ramzi says, smiling broadly, 'when you speak of a political programme, that your programme now is the same that Mahmoud Sami Al-Baroudi's government tried to establish more than a hundred years ago?'
'Is that right?' Isabel says.
'Yes. Yes, for sure,' Dr. Ramzi says. 'Listen: the ending of foreign influence, the payment of the Egyptian debt -' he counts them off on his fingers - 'an elected parliament, a national industry, equality of all men before the law, reform of education, and allowing a free press to reflect all shades of opinion. Those were the seven points of their programme. These young people -' the wave of his hand takes in the group - 'they still ask for this.' He shrugs. ~ Ahdaf Soueif

In my heart of hearts I knew I was wrong. The World Cup was about to begin in the United States. The planet was interested in nothing else. And in any case, whatever happened in Rwanda, it would always be the same old story of blacks beating up on each other. Even Africans would say, during half-time of every match, "They're embarrassing us, they should stop killing each other like that." Then they'll go on to something else. [9-10] ~ Boubacar Boris Diop

Yes, I was my father and I was my son, I asked myself questions and answered as best I could, I had it told to me evening after evening, the same old story I knew by heart and couldn't believe, or we walked together, hand in hand, silent, sunk in our worlds, each in his worlds, the hands forgotten in each other. That's how I've held out till now. And this evening again it seems to be working, I'm in my arms, I'm holding myself in my arms, without much tenderness, but faithfully, faithfully. Sleep now, as under that ancient lamp, all twined together, tired out with so much talking, so much listening, so much toil and play. ~ Samuel Beckett

Driving home, I heard the explosion and thought it was a new story born. But, Adrian, it's the same old story, whispered past the same false teeth. How can we imagine a new language when the language of the enemy keeps our dismembered tongues tied to his belt? How can we imagine a new alphabet when the old jumps off billboards down into our stomachs? Adrian, what did you say? I want to rasp into sober cryptology and say something dynamic but tonight is my laundry night. How do we imagine a new life when a pocketful of quarters weighs our possibilities down? ~ Sherman Alexie

We could start, perhaps, with the seemingly simple question, What is History? Any thoughts, Webster?' 'History is the lies of the victors,' I replied, a little too quickly. 'Yes, I was rather afraid you'd say that. Well, as long as you remember that it is also the self-delusions of the defeated. Simpson?' Colin was more prepared than me. 'History is a raw onion sandwich, sir.' 'For what reason?' 'It just repeats, sir. It burps. We've seen it again and again this year. Same old story, same old oscillation between tyranny and rebellion, war and peace, prosperity and impoverishment.' 'Rather a lot for a sandwich to contain, wouldn't you say?' We laughed far more than was required, with an end-of-term hysteria. 'Finn?' '"History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation." ' 'Is it, indeed? Where did you find that?' 'Lagrange, sir. Patrick Lagrange. He's French. ~ Julian Barnes

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

And don't give me the same old story:
"We're in Mexico. Pray."
You'd be better off taking a snake rattle. ~ Carlos Fuentes

Do something about your life now. You know you are sick and tired of being sick and tired. Don't just think about it, look at it, and complain about it to whoever will listen. Stop conning yourself into being a volunteer victim, or telling the same old story. You are better than that. It's time to stand up for yourself and your dream. This is the one and only life that you have. Don't waste it watching someone's life - on tv, in a movie, a series or reality show. Take your power back and make a move. Live your life on your terms, and create something new in your life. You Deserve! ~ Les Brown

New Year - a new chapter, new verse, or just the same old story ? Ultimately we write it. The choice is ours. ~ Alex Morritt

It's the same old story you've heard a thousand times. Somebody's trust gets broken. Somebody's left behind. ~ Travis Tritt

It's the same old story," he would say, years later; "the inventor gets the experience, and the capitalist gets the invention. ~ Tim Wu

Dreams last so long
Even after you're gone
I know you love me
And soon you will see
You were meant for me
And I was meant for you
Go about my business, I'm doing fine
Besides, what would I say if I had you on the line
Same old story, not much to say
Hearts are broken every day
I'm half alive but I feel mostly dead
I try to tell myself it'll be all right
I just shouldn't think anymore tonight ~ Jewel

Blood that was warm has now run cold
bled every day have hearts become old
Telling I am the story of my past
and of the ghosts at which it is aghast

Life as a child was a wonderful rhapsody
Free from the fetters of rational prosody
Naively making brute reality a parody
Revelling in a soul filled with life's melody

Poverty struck and child became destitute
wailing and whimpering like a wretched prostitute
Of pleasure and pain does a society constitute
for Man is not for God to substitute

Life is a parody of paradoxical Irony
Fate rules not without a touch of Tyranny
While the rich belch on their goblets of honey
the wretched etch on the tablets of agony ~ Prabhukrishna M

All great human deeds both consume and transform their doers. Consider an athlete,or a scientist, or an independent business creator. in service of their goals they lay down time and energy and many other choices and pleasures; in return, they become most truly themselves. A false destiny may be spotted by the fact that it consumes without transforming, without giving back the enlarged self. Becoming a parent is one of these basic human transformational deeds. By this act, we change our fundamental relationship with the universe- if nothing else, we lose our place as the pinnacle and end-point of evolution, and become a mere link. The demands of motherhood especially consume the old self, and replace it with something new, often better and wiser, sometimes wearier or disillusioned, or tense and terrified, certainly more self-knowing, but never the same again. ~ Lois McMaster Bujold

This country is about, in my judgment, aggressive, open debate. There is an old saying: When everyone is thinking the same thing, no one is thinking very much. ~ Byron Dorgan

What moments of despair that life would ever be made precious to me by the consciousness that I lived to some good purpose! It was that sort of despair that sucked away the sap of half the hours which might have been filled by energetic youthful activity: and the same demon tries to get hold of me again whenever an old work is dismissed and a new one is being meditated. ~ George Eliot

Saint Antoine slept, the Defarges slept: even The Vengeance slept with her starved grocer, and the drum was at rest. The drum's was the only voice in Saint Antoine that blood and hurry had not changed. The Vengeance, as custodian of the drum, could have wakened him up and had the same speech out of him as before the Bastille fell, or old Foulon was seized; not so with the hoarse tones of the men and women in Saint Antoine's bosom. ~ Charles Dickens

The ceremonies that persist - birthdays, weddings, funerals - focus only on ourselves, marking rites of personal transition. […]
We know how to carry out this rite for each other and we do it well. But imagine standing by the river, flooded with those same feelings as the Salmon march into the auditorium of their estuary. Rise in their honor, thank them for all the ways they have enriched our lives, sing to honor their hard work and accomplishments against all odds, tell them they are our hope for the future, encourage them to go off into the world to grow, and pray that they will come home. Then the feasting begins. Can we extend our bonds of celebration and support from our own species to the others who need us?
Many indigenous traditions still recognize the place of ceremony and often focus their celebrations on other species and events in the cycle of the seasons. In a colonist society the ceremonies that endure are not about land; they're about family and culture, values that are transportable from the old country. Ceremonies for the land no doubt existed there, but it seems they did not survive emigration in any substantial way. I think there is wisdom in regenerating them here, as a means to form bonds with this land. ~ Robin Wall Kimmerer

He didn't want to be like some old-fashioned imperialist missionary, poncing about like Moses in a safari suit, capitalizing on a misconception that he was from the same tribe as Jesus and that God was an Englishman. ~ Michel Faber

I used to love history class. I can still quote whole passages by heart: "When the emperor entered the Hall of Balming Virtue, a violent wind came from a dark corner, and out of it slithered a giant serpent that coiled around the throne. The emperor fainted, and that night earthquakes struck Loyang, and waves swept the shores, and cranes shrieked in the marshes. On the fifth day of the sixth moon a long trail of black mist floated into the Hall of Concubines, and hot and cold became confused, and a hen turned into a rooster, and a woman turned into a man, and flesh fell from the skies." Now, that is grand stuff, just the thing to give to growing boys, and then we were old enough to read the greatest of all historians. This is what Ssu-ma Ch'ien had to say about the exact same subject: "The Chou Dynasty was nearing collapse." Bah. ~ Barry Hughart

There is a story told of one old wise man, whose name was Mencius. He was a follower of Confucius and he died when he was very, very old. Somebody asked him: If you were given life again, how will you start it? Said Mencius: I will pay more attention to my needs and less attention to my desires. And this realisation will come to you also. But it always comes very late and then life is no more in your hands. If you were given life again.... ~ Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

Let Her Go"

Well you only need the light when it's burning low
Only miss the sun when it starts to snow
Only know you love her when you let her go

Only know you've been high when you're feeling low
Only hate the road when you're missing home
Only know you love her when you let her go
And you let her go

Staring at the bottom of your glass
Hoping one day you'll make a dream last
But dreams come slow and they go so fast

You see her when you close your eyes
Maybe one day you'll understand why
Everything you touch surely dies

But you only need the light when it's burning low
Only miss the sun when it starts to snow
Only know you love her when you let her go

Only know you've been high when you're feeling low
Only hate the road when you're missing home
Only know you love her when you let her go

Staring at the ceiling in the dark
Same old empty feeling in your heart
Cause love comes slow and it goes so fast

Well you see her when you fall asleep
But never to touch and never to keep
Cause you loved her too much and you dived too deep

Well you only need the light when it's burning low
Only miss the sun when it starts to snow
Only know you love her when you let her go

Only know you've been high when you're feeling low
Only hate the road when you're missing home
Only know you l ~ Passenger

The night is always old. He'd walked too often down dark streets in the secret hours and felt the night stretching away, and known in his blood that while days and kings and empires come and g, the night is always the same age, always aeons deep. Terrors unfolded in the velvet shadows and while the nature of the talons may change, the nature of the beast does not. ~ Terry Pratchett

It's the same at a rock-and-roll concert. You have an opening number with a strong entrance; then you go through a lot of the old standards, building up to your hit song at the end. ~ Marjoe Gortner

All literature up to today is sexist. The Muses never sang to the poets about liberated women. It's the same old chanson from the Bible and Homer through Joyce and Proust. ~ Allan Bloom

You can't take your same old self into a bright new future. You would only darken it. ~ Chris Brady

Unending Love

I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times...
In life after life, in age after age, forever.
My spellbound heart has made and remade the necklace of songs,
That you take as a gift, wear round your neck in your many forms,
In life after life, in age after age, forever.

Whenever I hear old chronicles of love, it's age old pain,
It's ancient tale of being apart or together.
As I stare on and on into the past, in the end you emerge,
Clad in the light of a pole-star, piercing the darkness of time.
You become an image of what is remembered forever.

You and I have floated here on the stream that brings from the fount.
At the heart of time, love of one for another.
We have played along side millions of lovers,
Shared in the same shy sweetness of meeting,
the distressful tears of farewell,
Old love but in shapes that renew and renew forever.

Today it is heaped at your feet, it has found its end in you
The love of all man's days both past and forever:
Universal joy, universal sorrow, universal life.
The memories of all loves merging with this one love of ours -
And the songs of every poet past and forever. ~ Rabindranath Tagore

At some point in this course, perhaps even tonight, you will read something difficult, something you only partially understand, and your verdict will be this is stupid. Will I argue when you advance that opinion in class the next day? Why would I do such a useless ting? My time with you in short, only thirty-four weeks of classes, and I will not waste it arguing about the merits of this short story or that poem. Why would I, when all such opinions are subjective, and no final resolution can ever be reached?'

Some of the kids - Gloria was one of them - now looked lost, but Pete understood exactly what Mr. Ricker, aka Ricky the Hippie, was talking about...

'Time is the answer," Mr Ricker said on the first day of Pete's sophomore year. He strode back and forth, antique bellbottoms swishing, occasionally waving his arms. "Yes! Time mercilessly culls away the is-stupid from the not-stupid."
...
"It will occur for you, young ladies and gentlemen, although I will be in your rear-view mirror by the time it happens. Shall I tell you how it happens? You will read something - perhaps 'Dulce et Decorum Est,' by Wilfred Owen. Shall we use that as an example? Why not?'

Then, in a deeper voice that sent chills up Pete's back and tightened his throat, Mr. Ricker cried, " 'Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge...' And son on. Cetra-cetra. Some of you will say, This is stupid."

~ Stephen King

To the enormous majority of persons who risk themselves in literature, not even the smallest measure of success can fall. They had better take to some other profession as quickly as may be, they are only making a sure thing of disappointment, only crowding the narrow gates of fortune and fame. Yet there are others to whom success, though easily within their reach, does not seem a thing to be grasped at. Of two such, the pathetic story may be read, in the Memoir of A Scotch Probationer, Mr. Thomas Davidson, who died young, an unplaced Minister of the United Presbyterian Church, in 1869. He died young, unaccepted by the world, unheard of, uncomplaining, soon after writing his latest song on the first grey hairs of the lady whom he loved. And she, Miss Alison Dunlop, died also, a year ago, leaving a little work newly published, Anent Old Edinburgh, in which is briefly told the story of her life. There can hardly be a true tale more brave and honourable, for those two were eminently qualified to shine, with a clear and modest radiance, in letters. Both had a touch of poetry, Mr. Davidson left a few genuine poems, both had humour, knowledge, patience, industry, and literary conscientiousness. No success came to them, they did not even seek it, though it was easily within the reach of their powers. Yet none can call them failures, leaving, as they did, the fragrance of honourable and uncomplaining lives, and such brief records of these as to delight, and console and encourage us al ~ Andrew Lang

And I thought to myself, What am I doing? Am I reaching them at all? They are acting exactly as the old men did earlier. They are fifty years younger, maybe more, but doing the same thing those old men did who never attended school a day in their lives. Is it just a vicious circle? Am I doing anything? ~ Ernest Gaines

But the point is that a story is exciting because it has in it so strong an element of will, of what theology calls free-will. You cannot finish a sum how you like. But you can finish a story how you like. When somebody discovered the Differential Calculus there was only one Differential Calculus he could discover. But when Shakespeare killed Romeo he might have married him to Juliet's old nurse if he had felt inclined. And Christendom has excelled in the narrative romance exactly because it has insisted on the theological free-will. ~ G.K. Chesterton

It feels as if childhood sexual abuse or domestic abuse of women in the home has increased but actually if you ask women of 60 or 70 years old, the incidence is about the same. We just didn't know it. ~ Gloria Steinem

And therefore education at the University mostly worked by the age-old method of putting a lot of young people in the vicinity of a lot of books and hoping that something would pass from one to the other, while the actual young people put themselves in the vicinity of inns and taverns for exactly the same reason. ~ Terry Pratchett

It is now established by verifiable evidence that religion stultifies the brain and is the great obstacle in the path of intellectual progress.
The more religious a person is, the more he is steeped in ignorance and superstition, the less is his sense of moral responsibility. The more intelligent a person, the less religious he is. There is an old saying that 'where there are three scientists, there are two atheists.'
The countries whose governments are dominated by religion and religious institutions are the most backward. By the same token, the countries whose people are the most enlightened, and whose governments are based upon the principle of secularism - the separation of church and state - are the most progressive.
And let me tell you: When man is intellectually free, the progress he will make is beyond calculation. ~ Joseph Lewis

Baby!" he hissed. "Silly little bleater! Go home to your mother and drink milk. What do you understand of such things? But the others, listen. Tash is only another name for Aslan. All that old idea of us being right and the Calormenes wrong is silly. We know better now. The Calormenes use different words but we all mean the same thing. Tash and Aslan are only two different names for you know Who. That's why there can never be any quarrel between them. Get that into your heads, you stupid brutes. Tash is Aslan: Aslan is Tash ~ C.S. Lewis

He could tell Fleming he was a musician but he could not communicate what the music said to him or said to the people he played it for. The music told itself, it made some obscure connection for which there were no words. The music was its own story, but a man could dip into the vast reservoir of folk and blues lines and phrases and images and construct his own story: though upon performing it and without it losing any relevance to his own life it now belonged to the audience as well. It was something he could not fathom. The old songs with juryrigged verses like bodies cobbled up out of bones from a thousand skeletons. Songs about death and lost love and rambling down the line because sometimes down the line was the only place left. Songs that treated the most desperate of loss with a dark sardonic humour. "I'm going where the climate suits my clothes", the song said, not saying the frustration and despair that created it, saying that in the sheer lonesomeness of the sound, in the old man's driving banjo. There was an eerie timelessness about it that said it could have been written a thousand years ago, or it could have been an unfinished song about events that had not yet played themselves out. ~ William Gay

There she stands before me, and old woman with an anxious, care-worn face. Her hands are clasped - weary, toil-worn hands with a soft, wrinkled skin, where the veins stand out bluish; hands become so for my sake. - I never thought of that before. There is a lot I did not think of before; I was too young. But now I understand how it is that to this withered, little woman I am something different from any other soldier in the world: I am her child. To her I have always remained so, even as a soldier. In the war she has seen only a pack of wild beasts threatening the life of her child. It has never occurred to her that this same threatened child has been just such another wild beast to the children of yet other mothers. My ~ Erich Maria Remarque

People regurgitate the same old cliches and it becomes like a photocopy of a photocopy of something that's vaguely interesting. ~ Steve Coogan

By the time I was 18 years old, I had achieved everything that was in my heart to do and at the same time I wasn't finding the fulfillment I was expecting to get from it. All of the experiences were incredible and I wouldn't trade them for the world, but it wasn't fulfilling me. I went through the motions for a few more years, but I was looking for something more. ~ Kelly Clark

I need a name for this ink ... A name for the feeling you get when you see someone again. After many years. Someone lost to you. Or so you thought. And you remember them a certain way. In your mind, they never age. But then suddenly, there they are. Older. Changed by time. Different, but exactly the same. ~ Jennifer Donnelly

In the specially Christian case we have to react against the heavy bias of fatigue. It is almost impossible to make the facts vivid, because the facts are familiar; and for fallen men it is often true that familiarity is fatigue. I am convinced that if we could tell the supernatural story of Christ word for word as of a Chinese hero, call him the Son of Heaven instead of the Son of God, and trace his rayed nimbus in the gold thread of Chinese embroideries or the gold lacquer of Chinese pottery, instead of in the gold leaf of our own old Catholic paintings, there would be a unanimous testimony to the spiritual purity of the story. We should hear nothing then of the injustice of substitution or the illogicality of atonement, of the superstitious exaggeration of the burden of sin or the impossible insolence of an invasion of the laws of nature. We should admire the chivalry of the Chinese conception of a god who fell from the sky to fight the dragons and save the wicked from being devoured by their own fault and folly. We should admire the subtlety of the Chinese view of life, which perceives that all human imperfection is in very truth a crying imperfection. We should admire the Chinese esoteric and superior wisdom, which said there are higher cosmic laws than the laws we know. ~ G.K. Chesterton

Ideas and thoughts are like genes ... more you keep inside yourself more it multply with same species consuming your whole energy to breed to produce same old ideas and thoughts again and again until it kills you. So, let it be interact with other species..take it out ... make reaction with other peoples's thoughts and ideas and produce something new ... produce new energy..new thoughts..new perceptions ... ~ Jagdish Poudel

In the old days, writers used to sit in front of a typewriter and stare out of the window. Nowadays, because of the marvels of convergent technology, the thing you type on and the window you stare out of are now the same thing. ~ Douglas Adams

We have a task before us which must be speedily performed. We know that it will be ruinous to make delay. The most important crisis of our life calls, trumpet-tongued, for immediate energy and action. We glow, we are consumed with eagerness to commence the work, with the anticipation of whose glorious result our whole souls are on fire. It must, it shall be undertaken to-day, and yet we put it off until to-morrow; and why? There is no answer, except that we feel perverse, using the word with no comprehension of the principle. To-morrow arrives, and with it a more impatient anxiety to do our duty, but with this very increase of anxiety arrives, also, a nameless, a positively fearful, because unfathomable, craving for delay. This craving gathers strength as the moments fly. The last hour for action is at hand. We tremble with the violence of the conflict within us, - of the definite with the indefinite - of the substance with the shadow. But, if the contest have proceeded thus far, it is the shadow which prevails, - we struggle in vain. The clock strikes, and is the knell of our welfare. At the same time, it is the chanticleer-note to the ghost that has so long overawed us. It flies - it disappears - we are free. The old energy returns. We will labor now. Alas, it is too late! ~ Edgar Allan Poe