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Nostalgia Quotes

Browse 1745 quotes about Nostalgia.

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Nostalgia Quotes

“There's so much humanity in a love of trees, so much nostalgia for our first sense of wonder, so much power in just feeling our own insignificance when we are surrounded by nature...yes, that's it: just thinking about trees and their indifferent majesty and our love for them teaches us how ridiculous we are - vile parasites squirming on the surface of the earth - and at the same time how deserving of life we can be, when we can honor this beauty that owes us nothing.”

ThinkingFirstsFeelingsEarthHumanityWonderTeachTreeHonorSurfaceNostalgiaRidiculousIndifferentOur LoveMajestyDeservingParasitesSense Of WonderInsignificance
Author:Muriel Barbery
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“Toska - noun /ˈtō-skə/ - Russian word roughly translated as sadness, melancholia, lugubriousness. "No single word in English renders all the shades of toska. At its deepest and most painful, it is a sensation of great spiritual anguish, often without any specific cause. At less morbid levels it is a dull ache of the soul, a longing with nothing to long for, a sick pining, a vague restlessness, mental throes, yearning. In particular cases it may be the desire for somebody of something specific, nostalgia, love-sickness. At the lowest level it grades into ennui, boredom.”

MayLongSoulSpiritualDesireCausesLevelsCasesSadnessParticularSickLongingPainfulNostalgiaBoredomDullGradesSicknessSensationsShadeYearningVagueLowestAnguishAcheRestlessnessMorbidNounsSingle WordEnnuiGreat SpiritualPining
Author:Vladimir Nabokov
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“We didn't think the library was funny looking in it's faux- Greek splendor, nor did we find the cuisine limited or bland, or the movies at the Michigan theater relentlessly American and mindless. These were opinions I came to later, after I became a denizen of a City, an expatriate anxious to distance herself from the bumpkin ways of her youth. I am suddenly consumed by nostalgia for the little girl who was me, who loved the fields and believed in God, who spent winter days home sick from school reading Nancy Drew and sucking menthol cough drops, who could keep a secret.”

ThinkingWayLittlesHomeSchoolGirlReadingSecretCitiesOpinionFieldsYouthSickTheaterDistanceWinterLibraryNostalgiaGreekAnxiousConsumedSplendorMichiganMindlessCuisineNancyBlandFauxWinter DaysExpatriatesNancy DrewCough DropsHome Sick
Author:Audrey Niffenegger
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“He remembered his mentor, Lou Kline, telling him in the nineties that rock and roll had peaked at Monterey Pop. They'd been in Lou's house in LA with its waterfalls, the pretty girls Lou always had, his car collection out front, and Bennie had looked into his idol's famous face and thought, You're finished. Nostalgia was the end - everyone knew that.”

EndsFacesGirlHouseRocksCarFrontsPopsFinishedNostalgiaRememberedCollectionsIdolsMentorRock And RollPretty GirlWaterfallsMonterey
Book:A Visit From the Goon Squad
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“Humans are the only animals that have children on purpose, keep in touch (or don't), care about birthdays, waste and lose time, brush their teeth, feel nostalgia, scrub stains, have religions and political parties and laws, wear keepsakes, apologize years after an offense, whisper, fear themselves, interpret dreams, hide their genitalia, shave, bury time capsules, and can choose not to eat something for reasons of conscience. The justifications for eating animals and for not eating them are often identical: we are not them.”

FeelsYearsHumansChildrenReasonDreamCareLawPoliticalPurposeLosesAnimalPartyWasteEatingConscienceDon't CareNostalgiaTeethJustificationApologizingOffenseBrushesPolitical PartiesIdenticalStainsEating AnimalsTime CapsulesKeepsakes
Author:Jonathan Safran Foer
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“The feelings that hurt most, the emotions that sting most, are those that are absurd - The longing for impossible things, precisely because they are impossible; nostalgia for what never was; the desire for what could have been; regret over not being someone else; dissatisfaction with the world’s existence. All these half-tones of the soul’s consciousness create in us a painful landscape, an eternal sunset of what we are.”

WorldHas BeensSoulFeelingsDesireHopeHurtEmotionExistenceHalfConsciousnessImpossibleRegretEternalLongingPainfulNostalgiaAbsurdLandscapeToneSunsetYearningCould Have BeenDissatisfactionImpossible ThingsBook Of Disquiet
Book:Book of Disquietude
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“What had survived - maybe all that had survived of Trism - was Liir's sense of him. A catalog of impressions that arose from time to time, unbidden and often upsetting. From the sandy smell of his sandy hair to the locked grip of his muscles as they had wrestled in sensuous aggression - unwelcome nostalgia. Trism lived in Liir's heart like a full suit of clothes in a wardrobe, dress habillards maybe, hollow and real at once. The involuntary memory of the best of Trism's glinting virtues sometimes kicked up unquietable spasms of longing.”

HeartRealSometimesMemoriesVirtueHairClothesDressesLongingSmellNostalgiaImpressionSuitsUpsetMusclesLockedAggressionSurvivedHollowWardrobeInvoluntarySensuousSandyUnwelcome
Author:Gregory Maguire
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“If the fall of man consists in the separation of god and the devil the serpent must have appeared out of the middle of the apple when Eve bit like the original worm in it, splitting it in half and sundering everything which was once one into a pair of opposites, so the world is Noah's ark on the sea of eternity containing all the endless pairs of things, irreconcilable and inseparable, and heat will always long for cold and the back for the front and smiles for tears and mutt for jeff and no for yes with the most unutterable nostalgia there is.”

IfsMenWorldLongFallBitsHalfSeaMiddleFrontsTearsColdDevilOppositesEternityOriginalsNostalgiaSeparationEndlessHeatApplesPairsWormsInseparableSerpentContainingSplittingArkMuttsFall Of ManNoah's Ark
Book:Diane Arbus: revelations
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“But I’ve been turning over in my mind the question of nostalgia, and whether I suffer from it. I certainly don’t get soggy at the memory of some childhood knickknack; nor do I want to deceive myself sentimentally about something that wasn’t even true at the time—love of the old school, and so on. But if nostalgia means the powerful recollection of strong emotions—and a regret that such feelings are no longer present in our lives—then I plead guilty.”

IfsWantMindMeanFeelingsSchoolSufferingStrongMemoriesPowerfulEmotionOur LivesChildhoodRegretNostalgiaGuiltyDeceivingRecollectionOld SchoolTime LoveStrong Emotions
Author:Julian Barnes
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“There is a stage you reach, Deagle thinks, a time somewhere in early middle age, when your past ceases to be about yourself. Your connection to your former life is like a dream or delirium, and that person who you once were is merely a fond acquaintance, or a beloved character from a storybook. This is how memory becomes nostalgia. They are two very different things - the same way that a person is different from a photograph of a person.”

ThinkingWayLovePersonsTwoDifferentCharacterDreamAgePastLife IsMemoriesMiddleStageConnectionsPhotographNostalgiaCeaseFormerBelovedDifferent ThingsAbout YourselfAcquaintanceMiddle AgesYour PastLife Is LikeDeliriumFormer Life
Author:Dan Chaon
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“nostalgia, underlying cosmological explanation for Weak but detectable interaction between two neighboring universes that are otherwise not causally connected. Manifests itself in humans as a feeling of missing a place one has never been, a place very much like one’s home universe, or as a longing for versions of one’s self that one will never, and can never know.”

KnowsHumansTwoSelfFeelingsHomeUniverseMissingWeakLongingConnectedNostalgiaVersionsExplanationInteraction
Book:How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe: A Novel
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“Postmodernity is said to be a culture of fragmentary sensations, eclectic nostalgia, disposable simulacra, and promiscuous superficiality, in which the traditionally valued qualities of depth, coherence, meaning, originality, and authenticity are evacuated or dissolved amid the random swirl of empty signals.”

SaidCultureQualityEmptyDepthNostalgiaAuthenticitySensationsOriginalitySignalsEclecticDisposableSuperficialityCoherenceSwirlsPromiscuous
Author:Jean Baudrillard
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“Nostalgia is also a dangerous form of comparison. Think about how often we compare our lives to a memory that nostalgia has so completely edited that it never really existed.”

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Book:Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead
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“Looking at the elementary schoolers in their colorful T-shirts from various day camps, Percy felt a twinge of sadness. He should be at Camp Half-Blood right now, settling into his cabin for the summer, teaching sword-fighting lessons in the arena, playing pranks on the other counselors. These kids had no idea just how crazy a summer camp could be.”

ShouldIdeasKidsFightingFeltHalfBloodSadnessCrazyTeachingLessonsRight NowSummerVariousNostalgiaNo IdeaSettlingShirtsCampsArenaT ShirtColorfulCounselorCabinsPranksSummer Camp
Author:Rick Riordan
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“We have been taught to wish for it, but the wish to be understood may be our most vengeful demand, may be the way we hang on, as adults , to our grudge against our mothers; the way we never let our mothers off the hook for their not meeting our every need. Wanting to be understood, as adults, can be our most violent form of nostalgia.”

WayWantNeedsMayFormMotherWishUnderstandingPsychologyDemandUnderstoodAdultsMeetingsNostalgiaViolentHookVengeanceGrudgeVengeful
Author:Adam Phillips
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“In his extreme youth Stoner had thought of love as an absolute state of being to which, if one were lucky, one might find access; in his maturity he had decided it was the heaven of a false religion, toward which one ought to gaze with an amused disbelief, a gently familiar contempt, and an embarrassed nostalgia. Now in his middle age he began to know that it was neither a state of grace nor an illusion; he saw it as a human act of becoming, a condition that was invented and modified moment by moment and day by day, by the will and the intelligence and the heart.”

IfsKnowsHumansHeartStatesMomentsMightAgeHeavenSawsGraceMiddleConditionsYouthOughtBecomingLuckyIllusionDecidedAbsolutesExtremesAccessNostalgiaFamiliarMaturityContemptEmbarrassedMiddle AgesDisbeliefAmusedStoners
Author:John Edward Williams
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