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Nostalgia Quotes

Browse 1745 quotes about Nostalgia.

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Nostalgia Quotes

“عندما يموت الأب يصير الإبن أبا نفسه و ابن نفسه في نفس الوقت. ينظر إلى وجه طفله ويرى نفسه في وجه الصبي ، يتخيل ما الذي يراه الصبي عندما يلتفت نحوه وينظر إلى وجهه و يتكشّف للصبي أنه أبو نفسه. ولسبب غامض يجد نفسه مأخوذا بهذه الفكرة ، ليس منظر الصبي مكتشفا الحقائق هو ما دوّخه باللذة ، ولا حتى فكرة أنه يقف داخل أبيه ، ولكن الذي يراه في وجه الصبي من حياته الماضية المتلاشية. إنها حالة من "النوستالجيا" لحياته نفسها ، هذا ما يشعر به ، ربما ذكرى لطفولته كابن لوالده. ولسبب غامض أيضا يجد نفسه يرتعش في تلك اللحطة من الفرح ومن الأسى معا -لو كان هذا ممكنا- وكأنه يتقدم وفي نفس الوقت يتخلف ، نحو المستقبل ونحو الماضي معا. وهناك أوقات ، ودائما ما كانت هناك مثل هذه الأوقات ، عندما تكون هذه المشاعر في أشد قوتها وانفلاتها ، حتى يعود غير واثق من أن حياته تقيم في الزمن الحاضر”

NostalgiaFather And Son
Book:The Invention of Solitude
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“Chodziłam po domu i mamrotałam coś do siebie. Kiedy człowiek jest starszy, takie zajęcie sprawia przyjemność. Rozprawiasz się, z kim chcesz, wygłaszasz repliki, które nie przyszły ci do głowy w danej chwili, uśmiechasz się na miłe wspomnienie, odtwarzasz rejestr zdarzeń, ilekroć masz na to ochotę, żeby zrozumieć, dlaczego sprawy potoczyły się tak, a nie inaczej. Całe twoje życie jest tam, z tobą, w tym samym pokoju. Twoje plany są raczej planami z przeszłości niż planami na przyszłość.”

NostalgiaOld AgeReminiscence
Book:Sînt o babă comunistă!
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“When daylight lasts until 10pm because of the time change, and the traffic noise has died down, I have the illusion that all I’d need to do is return to those faraway neighborhoods to find the people I’ve lost, who had never left [...] Colette is leaning against the door of a private townhouse, hands in the pockets of her raincoat. Every time I look at that picture, it hurts. It’s like in the morning when you try to recall your dream from the night before, but all that’s left are scraps that dissolve before you can put them together. I knew that woman in another life and I’m doing my best to remember. Maybe someday I’ll manage to break through that layer of silence and amnesia.”

DreamsNostalgia
Book:Suspended Sentences: Three Novellas
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“Wszyscyśmy się wymieszali, nasza krew się zmieszała. W dowodzie ja i dzieci mamy napisane „Rosjanie”, chociaż nie jesteśmy Rosjanami. Jesteśmy obywatelami radzieckimi! Ale nie ma kraju, w którym się urodziłam. Nie ma ani miejsca, o którym mówiliśmy „ojczyzna”, ani tamtych czasów, które też były naszą ojczyzną.”

NostalgiaSoviet UnionNationality
Book:Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster
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“He stood and stared into the distance for a long while; he knew this spot particularly well. While attending university it often happened — a hundred times, perhaps, usually on his way home — that he would pause at precisely this spot, look intently at this truly magnificent panorama and every time be almost amazed by the obscure, irresolvable impression it made on him. An inexplicable chill came over him as he gazed at this magnificence; this gorgeous scene was filled for him by some dumb, deaf spirit... He marvelled every time at this sombre, mysterious impression and, distrusting himself, put off any attempt to explain it. Now, all of a sudden, those old questions of his, that old bewilderment, came back to him sharply, and it was no accident, he felt, that they'd come back now. The simple fact that he'd stopped at the very same spot as before seemed outlandish and bizarre, as if he really had imagined that now he could think the same old thoughts as before, take an interest in the same old subjects and scenes that had interested him... such a short while ago. He almost found it funny, yet his chest felt so tight it hurt. In the depths, down below, somewhere just visible beneath his feet, this old past appeared to him in its entirety, those old thoughts, old problems, old subjects, old impressions, and this whole panorama, and he himself, and everything, everything... It was as if he were flying off somewhere, higher and higher, and everything was vanishing before his eyes... Making an involuntary movement with his hand, he suddenly sensed the twenty-copeck piece in his fist. He unclenched his hand, stared hard at the coin, drew back his arm and hurled the coin into the water; then he turned round and set off home. It felt as if he'd taken a pair of scissors and cut himself off from everyone and everything, there and then.”

RegretMemoryNostalgia
Book:Crime and Punishment
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“When looking back on our lives, it is difficult objectively to evaluate our actions. When retelling our story, it is challenging to achieve balanced journalism. It is understandable why we might be inclined to overemphasize nostalgic feelings of happiness, glamorize stretches of childhood or other periods where life was rather uncomplicated, while assigning a disproportionate amount of anxiety to rougher periods of life. When we create strong, joyous memories, we preserve cherished feelings in the present. By assigning selective pleasant memories to the past, we create a homey place where we can return to visit. Fondness for nostalgic memories provides a buffer from existential threat, improves mood, combats loneliness, increases social consecutiveness, and enhances self-regard.”

MemoriesNostalgiaMemoirWriters On WritingMemoir WritingStory Of My LifeWriters On ThinkingSelf Evaluation
Book:Dead Toad Scrolls
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“He listened to the hooting of many metal horns, squealing of brakes, the calls of vendors selling red-purple bananas and jungle oranges in their stalls. Colonel Freeleigh's feet began to move, hanging from the edge of his wheel chair, making the motions of a man walking. His eyes squeezed tight. He gave a series of immense sniffs, as if to gain the odors of meats hung on iron hooks in sunshine, cloaked with flies like a mantle of raisins; the smell of stone alleys wet with morning rain. He could feel the sun bum his spiny-bearded cheek, and he was twenty-five years old again, walking, walking, looking, smiling, happy to be alive, very much alert, drinking in colors and smells.”

StreetsMemoryNostalgiaBananasVendors
Book:Dandelion Wine
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“I felt Nairobi's foreignness — or really, my own foreignness in relation to it — immediately, even in the first strains of morning. It's a sensation I've come to love as I've traveled more, the way a new place signals itself instantly and without pretense. The air has a different weight from what you're used to; it carries smells you can't quite identify, a faint whiff of wood smoke or diesel fuel, maybe, or the sweetness of something blooming in the trees. The same sun comes up, but looking slightly different from what you know.”

TravelNostalgiaWanderlust
Book:Becoming
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“The phone was laid on a desk thousands of miles away. Once more, with that clear familiarity, the footsteps, the pause, and, at last, the raising of the window. "Listen," whispered the old man to himself. And he heard a thousand people in another sunlight, and the faint, tinkling music of an organ grinder playing "La Marimba"— oh, a lovely, dancing tune. With eyes tight, the old man put up his hand as if to click pictures of an old cathedral, and his body was heavier with flesh, younger, and he felt the hot pavement underfoot. He wanted to say, "You're still there, aren't you? All of: you people in that city in the time of the early siesta, the shops closing, the little boys crying loteria nacional para hoy! to sell lottery tickets. You are all there, the people in the city. I can't believe I was ever among you. When you are away I: from a city it becomes a fantasy. Any town, New York, Chicago, with its people, becomes improbable with distance. Just as I am improbable here, in Illinois, in a small town by a ' quiet lake. All of us improbable to one another because we are not present to one another. And it is so good to hear the sounds, and know that Mexico City is still there and the people moving and living . . .”

TimeMemoryNostalgiaPhone
Book:Dandelion Wine
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“Here’s the truth of nostalgia: we don’t feel it for who we were but who we weren’t, we feel it for all the possibilities that were open to us but that we didn’t take. Time is like wax dripping from a candle flame. In the moment it is molten and falling with the capability to transform into any shape. Then the moment passes and the wax hits the table top and solidifies into the shape it will always be; it becomes the past, a solid single record of what happened still holding in its wild curves and contours the potential of every shape it could have held. It is impossible no matter how blessed you are by luck or the government or some remote invisible deity gently steering your life with hands made of moonlight and wind, it is impossible not to feel a little sad looking at that bit of wax; that bit of the past. It is impossible not to think of all the wild forms that wax now will never take.”

Nostalgia
Book:Mostly Void, Partially Stars
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“The formula for this brand of "historical" writing is to put the public on the inside; to let them feel the palpitations of royal and imperial lovers and to overhear their lispings and cooings. It can be argued that a man has to live somewhere, and that if his own time is so cut up by rapid change that he can't find a cranny big enough to relax in, then he must betake himself to the past. That is certainly one motive in the production of historical romance, from Sir Walter Scott to Thornton Wilder. But mainly this formula works as a means of flattery. The public is not only invited inside but encouraged to believe that there is nothing inside that differs from its own thoughts and feelings. This reassurance is provided by endowing historical figures with the sloppiest possible minds. The great are "humanized" by being trivial. The debunking school began by making the great appear as corrupt, or mean and egotistical. The "humanizers" have merely carried on to make them idiotic. "Democratic" vanity has reached such proportions that it cannot accept as human anything above the level of cretinous confusion of mind of the type popularized by Hemingway's heroes. Just as the new star must be made to appear successful by reason of some freak of fortune, so the great, past or present, must be made to seem so because of the most ordinary qualities, to which fortune adds an unearned trick or idea.”

TruthPastTimeChangeFictionNostalgiaHistorical FictionRelaxationPast And PresentRapid Change
Book:The Mechanical Bride : Folklore of Industrial Man
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“Maybe nostalgia is itself the problem. A Democrat I met in Macon during a conversation we had about the local enthusiasm for Trump told me that “people want to go back to Mayberry”, the setting of the beloved old Andy Griffith Show. (As it happens, the actual model for Mayberry, Mount Airy, a bedraggled town in North Carolina, has gone all in on the Trump revolution, as the Washington Post recently reported.) Maybe it’s also true, as my liberal friends believe, that what people in this part of the country secretly long to go back to are the days when the Klan was riding high or when Quantrill was terrorizing the people of neighboring Kansas, or when Dred Scott was losing his famous court case. For sure, there is a streak of that ugly sentiment in the Trump phenomenon. But I want to suggest something different: that the nostalgic urge does not necessarily have to be a reactionary one. There is nothing un-progressive about wanting your town to thrive, about recognizing that it isn’t thriving today, about figuring out that the mid-century, liberal way worked better. For me, at least, that is how nostalgia unfolds. When I drive around this part of the country, I always do so with a WPA guidebook in hand, the better to help me locate the architectural achievements of the Roosevelt years. I used to patronize a list of restaurants supposedly favored by Harry Truman (they are slowly disappearing). And these days, as I pass Trump sign after Trump sign, I wonder what has made so many of Truman’s people cast their lot with this blustering would-be caudillo. Maybe what I’m pining for is a liberal Magic Kingdom, a non-racist midwest where things function again. For a countryside dotted with small towns where the business district has reasonable job-creating businesses in it, taverns too. For a state where the giant chain stores haven’t succeeded in putting everyone out of business. For an economy where workers can form unions and buy new cars every couple of years, where farmers enjoy the protection of the laws, and where corporate management has not been permitted to use every trick available to them to drive down wages and play desperate cities off one against the other. Maybe it’s just an impossible utopia, a shimmering Mayberry dream. But somehow I don’t think so.”

PoliticsTrumpNostalgiaProgressivism
Book:Rendezvous with Oblivion: Reports from a Sinking Society
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“My bedroom looked very different the morning of my eighteenth birthday. It looked lonely. I opened my eyes just as the sun started creeping through the window, and I stared at the white chest of drawers that had greeted me every morning since I could remember. Maybe it’s stupid to think that a piece of furniture had feelings, but then again, I’m the same girl who kept my tattered old baby doll dressed in a sweater and knitted cap so she wouldn’t get cold sitting on the top shelf of my closet. And this morning that chest of drawers was looking sad. All the photographs and trophies and silly knickknacks that had blanketed the top and told my life story better than any words ever could were gone, packed in brown cardboard boxes and neatly stacked in the cellar. Even my pretty pink walls were bare. Mama picked that color after I was born, and I’ve never wanted to change it. Ruthis Morgan used to try to convince me that my walls should be painted some other color. ‘Pink’s just not your color, Catherine Grace. You know as well as I do that there’s not a speck of pink on the football field.’ There was nothing she could say that was going to change my mind of the color on my walls. If I had I would have lost another piece of my mama. And I wasn’t letting go of any piece of her, pink or not. Daddy insisted on replacing my tired, worn curtains a while back, but I threw such a fit that he spent a good seven weeks looking for the very same fabric, little bitsy pink flowers on a white -and-pink-checkered background. He finally found a few yards in some textile mill down in South Carolina. I told him there were a few things in life that should never be allowed to change, and my curtains were one of them. So many other things were never going to stay the same, and this morning was one of them. I’d been praying for this day for as long as I could remember, and now that it was here, all I wanted to do was crawl under my covers and pretend it was any other day. . . . I know that this would be the last morning I would wake up in this bed as a Sunday-school-going, dishwashing, tomato-watering member of this family. I knew this would be the last morning I would wake up in the same bed where I had calculated God only knows how many algebra problems, the same bed I had hid under playing hide-and-seek with Martha Ann, and the same bed I had lain on and cried myself to sleep too many nights after Mama died. I wasn’t sure how I was going to make it through the day considering I was having such a hard time just saying good-bye to my bed.”

Nostalgia
Book:Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queen: A Novel
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“There's no harm in reviewing the past from time to time; knowing where you've been is part of knowing where you are, and all that happy horse shit. But the American media have an absolute fixation on this. They rob us of the present by insisting on the past. If they were able, I'm sure they would pay equal attention to the future. Trouble is, they don't have any film on it.”

AmericaPastCultureMediaFutureNostalgiaPresentBe Here Now
Book:Brain Droppings
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“If a memory or a particular sadness we feel is capable of disappearing, to the point where we no longer notice it, it can also return and sometimes remain there for a long time. There were evenings when, as I crossed the town on my way to the restaurant, I felt so great a pang of longing for Mme de Guermantes that it took my breath away: it was as if part of my breast had been cut out by a skilled anatomist and replaced by an equal part of immaterial suffering, by an equivalent degree of nostalgia and love. And however neat the surgeon’s stitches are, life is rather painful when longing for another person is substituted for the intestines; it seems to occupy more space than they do; it is a constantly felt presence; and then, how utterly unsettling it is to be obliged to think with part of the body! Yet it does somehow make us feel more authentic.”

LoveMemoryNostalgiaProustMarcelproust
Book:The Guermantes Way
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“America has no now. We're reluctant to acknowledge the present. It's too embarrassing. Instead, we reach into the past. Our culture is composed of sequels, reruns, remakes, revivals, reissues, re-releases, recreations, reenactments, adaptations, anniversaries, memorabilia, oldies radio, and nostalgia record collections. World War II has been refought so many times, the Germans and Japanese are now drawing residuals.”

AmericaPastFutureNostalgiaPresentNowRetroRepeat
Book:Brain Droppings
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“¿Has hecho bien en volver? Te arrepentirás, Urania. Desperdiciar una semana de vacaciones, tú que nunca tenías tiempo para conocer tantas ciudades, regiones, países que te hubiera gustado ver -las cordilleras y los lagos nevados de Alaska, por ejemploretornando a la islita que juraste no volver a pisar. ¿Síntoma de decadencia? ¿Sentimentalismo otoñal? Curiosidad, nada más. Probarte que puedes caminar por las calles de esta ciudad que ya no es tuya, recorrer este país ajeno, sin que ello te provoque tristeza, nostalgia, odio, amargura, rabia.”

NostalgiaPaisSentimentalismo
Book:The Feast of the Goat
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