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Past Quotes

“I've gone up for loads of jobs in the past that I knew were going to be terrible, and I've done my best, and I still haven't got them. So I think I've been lucky in who's decided I'd be worthy of their time.”

Thinking Stills Done Jobs Past Gone Havens Terrible Lucky Decided Worthy Load

Author:Chris O'Dowd

“I wouldn't say that processed food, ready meals and even takeaways aren't relevant to modern life, it's just that over the past 40 years there are three generations of people who have come out of school and gone through their home life without ever being shown how to cook properly.”

People Years Home School Past Three Gone Generations Modern Ready Cooks Meals Relevant Modern Life Over The Past Home Life Three Generations Processed Food Takeaways

Author:Jamie Oliver

“I think about my mother every day. But usually the thoughts are fleeting - she crosses my mind like a spring cardinal that flies past the edge of your eye: startling, luminous, lovely... gone.”

Thinking Mind Eye Past Mother Gone Spring Crosses Edges Lovely Fleeting Luminous Cardinals

Author:Meghan O'Rourke

“O God, enlarge within us the sense of fellowship with all living things, even our brothers, the animals, to whom Thou gavest the earth as their home in common with us. We must remember with shame that in the past we have exercised the high dominion of man with ruthless cruelty so that the voice of the earth, which should have gone up to thee in song, has been a groan of pain. May we realize that they live, not for us alone, but for themselves and for Thee and that they love the sweetness of life.”

“Thoughtful people are concerned with the future because that is the only area of experience about which anything can be done. We cannot change the past, and the present is gone as soon as it is reported, but the future is that in which we can make a difference.”

People Done Past Differences Gone Future Areas Concerned Thoughtful Making A Difference

Author:D. Elton Trueblood

“I don't think I've ever gone on stage to be an asshole. I know one thing, from the past, and that's that my intentions always began in a pure way. I really want to just try and play the songs.”

Thinking Knows Way Want Trying Play Past Song Gone One Thing Stage Pure Intention

Author:Ryan Adams

“It is a delicious moment, certainly, that of being well nestled in bed, and feeling that you shall drop gently to sleep. The good is to come, not past; the limbs have just been tired enough to render the remaining in one posture delightful; the labour of the day is gone”

Wells Enough Moments Feelings Past Sleep Gone Bed Tired Labour Delightful Delicious Limbs Posture

Book:The Indicator

Source: The Indicator

“Sometimes a person has to go back, really back-to have a sense, an understanding of all that's gone to make them-before they can go forward.”

Persons Sometimes Past Understanding Gone Self Knowledge

Book:Reena and Other Stories

Source: Reena and Other Stories

“Where there has been racial hatred, it must be ended. Where there has been tribal animosity, it will be finished. Let us not dwell upon the bitterness of the past. I would rather look to the future, to the good new Kenya, not to the bad old days. If we can create this sense of national direction and identity, we shall have gone a long way to solving our economic problems.”

Ifs Way Looks Long Has Beens Problem Past Gone Economic Identity Hatred Finished Bitterness Long Way Old Days Kenya Animosity Economic Problems Looking To The Future

Author:Jomo Kenyatta

“Every man among us is more fit to meet the duties and responsibilities of citizenship because of the perils over which, in the past, the nation has triumphed; because of the blood and sweat and tears, the labor and the anguish, through which, in the days that have gone, our forefathers moved on to triumph.”

Men Past Nations Responsibility Gone Blood Tears Duty Fit Labor Moved Every Man Triumph Sweat Citizenship Anguish Peril Forefathers Moved On Sweat And Tears Blood And Sweat

Author:Theodore Roosevelt

“The pictures remind you of something that can never be recaptured, the time is gone, the only thing you know is the present. That's all that's knowable and even the present isn't knowable. The present becomes the past... so you really don't know anything.”

Knows Past Gone

Author:William Shatner

“The great military leaders of the past have gone, their empires have crumbled and burned to ashes. But the empire of Jesus, built solidly and majestically on the foundation of love, is still growing.”

Stills Past Jesus Love Is Leader Gone Growing Military Built Foundation Empires Burned Ashes Great Military Military Leader Foundation Of Love

Book:A Gift of Love: Sermons from Strength to Love and Other Preachings

Source: A Gift of Love: Sermons from Strength to Love and Other Preachings

“Love seems to survive life, and to reach beyond it. I think we take it with us past the grave. Do we not still give it to those who have left us? May we not hope that they feel it for us, and that we shall leave it here in one or two fond bosoms, when we also are gone?”

Thinking Love Giving Feels May Stills Two Seems Past Left Gone Graves One Love Bosoms

Book:The Virginians: A Tale of the Last Century

Source: The Virginians: A Tale of the Last Century

“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 forever from our imagination, and we can only believe in the joy of childhood.”

Believe Long Past Joy Mother Father Imagination Memories Morning Gone Forever Childhood Sunlight Recalls Our Father Bosoms Our Memories Gladness Apricots Joys Of Childhood

Book:Four Novels of George Eliot

Source: Four Novels of George Eliot

“There is nothing--no circumstance, no trouble, no testing--that can ever touch me until, first of all, it has gone past God and past Christ right through to me. If it has come that far, it has come with a great purpose, which I may not understand at the moment. But as I refuse to become panicky, as I lift up my eyes to Him and accept it as coming from the throne of God for some great purpose of blessing to my own heart, no sorrow will ever disturb me, no circumstance will cause me to fret, for I shall rest in the joy of what my Lord is--that is the rest of victory!”

“The future and the past are equally meaningless because they are nebulous entities, times that do not exist, containing events which have no echo because they are gone, or which hold no import because they are yet to happen. What is important is the here and now, and now, and now, and the spaces between the nows.”

Important Happens Past Space Gone Events Meaningless Entity Echoes Here And Now Imports Space Between Containing

Author:Tim Lebbon

“Press on! If Fortune play thee false To-day, tomorrow she'll be true; Whom now she sinks she now exalts, Taking old gifts and granting new, The wisdom of the present hour Makes up the follies past and gone; To weakness, strength succeeds, and power From frailty springs! Press on, press on!”

Ifs Play Past Hours Gone Tomorrow Succeed Spring Weakness Presses Fortune Being True Thee Folly Frailty

Author:Benjamin

“I do not compare the past with the present without a prejudice for either, but, great as the improvement in country life is in many respects, it seems a pity the old cheap, wholesome dishes have gone to make way for tinned and preserved foods.”

Way Country Seems Past Life Is Gone Prejudice Improvement Pity Compare Dishes Country Life

Author:Flora Thompson

“But before Derby go, would they mind telling the rest of the Premier League - the league which it has debased with its pathetically-inadequate presence for the past 12 months - where the money has gone? You know, the £30m or so in prize money that every team, even the one at the bottom of the table from August to May, automatically receives by being in the Premier League... So what happened to that money? Or put another way, why was such a meaningless fraction of it spent on recruiting new players? It's one thing not to compete; it's quite another not to even attempt to do so.”

“I met people that I couldn't talk to - they didn't speak Spanish or English - but they knew my songs. That's what I love, the music has gone past where I thought it would get to. That's the power of music, how it can travel and break language barriers.”

People Past Song Speak Language Break Gone Mets Barriers Power Of Music Language Barriers

Author:Prince Royce

“The thing that strikes me now when I think about the Wilderness of Childhood is the incredible degree of freedom my parents gave me to adventure there. A very grave, very significant shift in our idea of childhood has occurred since then. The Wilderness of Childhood is gone; the days of adventure are past. The land ruled by children, to which a kid might exile himself for at least some portion of every day from the neighboring kingdom of adulthood, has in large part been taken over, co-opted, colonized, and finally absorbed by the neighbors.”

Thinking Children Ideas Might Kids Past Parent Gone Taken Land Childhood Adventure Degrees Incredibles Strikes Neighbor Significant Graves Kingdoms Wilderness Portions Adulthood Exile

Author:Michael Chabon

“To retrieve the past is no great effort, when the events to be recalled are so firmly imprinted on the mind. It is existence in the present, the bleak wreckage and residue of what has gone before, that is so burdensome.”

Mind Past Effort Existence Gone Events Bleak Wreckage Great Effort

Book:Infernal Devices

Source: Infernal Devices

“The truth has never been told about women in history: that everywhere man has gone woman has gone too, and what he has done she has done also. Women are ignorant of their own past and ignorant of their own importance in that past.”

Men Done Past History Gone Importance Ignorant Women In History

Book:Of Men and Women

Source: Of Men and Women

“At the bottom there is no perfect history; there is none such conceivable. All past centuries have rotted down, and gone confusedly dumb and quiet.”

Past Perfect History Gone Century Quiet Down And Bottom Dumb

Book:The Works of Thomas Carlyle

Source: The Works of Thomas Carlyle

“O days remember'd well! remember'd all! The bitter sweet, the honey and the gall; Those garden rambles in the silent night, Those trees so shady, and that moon se bright, That thickset alley by the arbor clos'd, That woodbine seat where we at last repos'd; And then the hopes that came and then were gone, Quick as the clouds beneath the moon past on.”

Wells Lasts Past Remember Night Gone Tree Sweet Moon Garden Silent Clouds Bitter Seats Honey Alleys Courtship Shady Bitter Sweet Silent Night Arbors

Author:George Crabbe

“The past is gone. I know it sounds cliché, but you're here. Like be in it. And boxing was a really good analogy for me to try and carry that in my everyday life all the time.”

Knows Trying Past Sound Gone Everyday Boxing Everyday Life Analogies

Author:Hilary Swank

“I've gone into prisons, I've gone into schools, I've gone into corporations, all over the world. It doesn't matter where you go, people are essentially the same. Our culture is different, but culture is nothing but group habit, culture is paradigm and when you get past the culture, people are essentially the same.”

People World Different Matter School Past Culture Gone Groups Habit Prison Corporations Paradigm

Author:Bob Proctor

“time past is not time gone, it is time accumulated with the host resembling the character in the fairytale who was joined along the route by more and more characters none of whom could be separated from one another or from the host, with some stuck so fast that their presence caused physical pain.”

Character Pain Past Gone Stuck Host Routes Fairytale Physical Pain Times Past

Book:To the is-land: an autobiography

Source: To the is-land: an autobiography

“Earth has scarcely an acre that does not remind us of actions that have long preceded our own, and its clustering tombstones loom up like reefs of the eternal shore, to show us where so many human barks have struck and gone down.”

Humans Long Doe Shows Action Earth Past Gone Eternal Shore Bark Acres Tombstone Reefs

Author:Edwin Hubbel Chapin

“In America, racism exists but racists are all gone. Racists belong to the past. Racists are the thin-lipped mean white people in the movies about the civil rights era. Here's the thing: the manifestation of racism has changed but the language has not. So if you haven't lynched somebody then you can't be called a racist. If you're not a bloodsucking monster, then you can't be called a racist. Somebody has to be able to say that racists are not monsters.”

People Ifs Mean Able America Past Language White Gone Rights Havens Changed Racism Monsters Civil Rights Eras Manifestation Racist

Author:Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

“Stand-up life is really hard. At one point, I got so paralyzed I could write five screenplays before I could write three jokes for stand-up. Later, I've finally allowed myself to relax quite a bit, to think I can do it because I've done it in the past. The pressure to come up with the material is the same but the anxiety about whether I can do it is gone.”

Thinking Writing I Can Hard Done Past Life Is Three Bits Can Do Gone Five Materials Anxiety Jokes Pressure Come Up Relax Screenplays I Can Do It Paralyzed

Author:Steve Martin

“As I said just now, the world has gone past me. I don't blame it; but I no longer understand it. Tradesmen are not the same as they used to be, apprentices are not the same, business is not the same, business commodities are not the same. Seven-eighths of my stock is old-fashioned. I am an old-fashioned man in an old-fashioned shop, in a street that is not the same as I remember it. I have fallen behind the time, and am too old to catch it again.”

Source: Charles Dickens's works. Charles Dickens ed. [18 vols. of a 21 vol. set. Wanting A child's history of England; Christmas stories; The mystery of Edwin Drood].

“Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men's reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.”

Source: Occasions and protests