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Past Quotes

“Your closest relationships are often the ones that have the most effect on you, but they are frequently the ones most difficult to change. These relationships are complex and have long histories. Lifetime habits of avoiding being really present with each other may exist in many of them. Family members, for instance, might want to support you, but will not necessarily know how to genuinely listen or be present with you in a way that is enlivening. . . . Even with the best intentions, it can be very difficult to get beyond the past and into the Now.”

KnowsWayWantMayLongMightPastDifficultSupportKnow HowRelationshipEffectsHabitMembersIntentionLifetimeComplexesInstanceBeing RealClosestAvoidingFamily MembersSupport YouBest Intentions
Author:Richard Moss
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“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.”

MenShouldMayHas BeensHomeEarthPainPastRememberSongVoiceRealizingAnimalCommonGoneBrotherCreaturesShould HaveShameCrueltyTheeSweetnessFellowshipLiving ThingsRuthlessDominionSweetness Of Life
Author:Saint Basil
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“My hold on the past and the future is precarious and my possession of my own time is always postponed until a stage when I may fully understand it, yet this stage can never be reached, since it would be one more moment bounded by the horizon of its future, and requiring in its turn, further developments in order to be understood.”

MayMomentsWould BePastOrderTurnsMy OwnStageDevelopmentUnderstoodPossessionHorizonPrecarious
Book:Phenomenology of Perception
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“In examining the CIA's past and present use of the U.S. media, the Committee finds two reasons for concern. The first is the potential, inherent in covert media operations, for manipulating or incidentally misleading the American public. The second is the damage to the credibility and independence of a free press which may be caused by covert relationships with the U.S. journalists and media organizations.”

FirstsMayTwoReasonUsePastMediaConcernOrganizationIndependencePressesJournalistOperationsDamageInherentCommitteesCredibilityCiaMisleadExaminingPast And PresentFree PressCovert
Author:Frank Church
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“May it not be asked of every intelligent friend to the liberties of his country, whether the power exercised in such an act as this ought not to produce great and universal alarm? Whether a rigid execution of such an act, in time past, would not have repressed that information and communication among the people which is indispensable to the just exercise of their electoral rights? And whether such an act, if made perpetual, and enforced with rigor, would not, in time to come, either destroy our free system of government, or prepare a convulsion that might prove equally fatal to it?”

PeopleIfsMayMadeCountryGovernmentMightPastLibertyRightsInformationProduceCommunicationOughtExerciseProveUniversalConstitutionIntelligentPerpetualExecutionIndispensableAlarmsRepressedRigorSystems Of GovernmentTimes PastInformation And Communication
Book:The Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution: As Recommended by the General Convention at Philadelphia in 1787. Together with the Journal of the Federal Convention, Luther Martin's Letter, Yates's Minutes, Congressional Opinions, Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of '98-'99, and Other Illustrations of the Constitution
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“There is, however, no advantage in reflections on the past further than may be of service to the present. For the future we must provide by maintaining what the present gives us and redoubling our efforts; it is hereditary to us to win virtue as the fruit of labour, and you must not change the habit, even though you should have a slight advantage in wealth and resources; for it is not right that what was won in want should be lost in plenty.”

WantGivingShouldMayPastWinningLostWealthEffortVirtueHabitReflectionResourcesAdvantageShould HaveFruitPlentyLabourMaintainingHereditary
Book:The Peloponnesian War
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“When Arthur Ashe plays tennis, his purpose each day is to play the game in a way he has never played it before. It may be a backhand he uses, one that he may never have used before in that circumstance. His play is a fresh integration of his world at the instant of action. A really great scientist has the whole past at his disposal. At any instant he is rebuilding the world, molecule by molecule, in his subconscious. That is what you want in an athlete or a scientist.”

WorldWayWantMayPlayWholeUseActionPastUsedPurposeGamesCircumstancesScientistAthleteWhat You WantInstantTennisEach DaySubconsciousReally GreatIntegrationMoleculesArthurRebuildingGreat Scientist
Author:Edwin Land
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“At times it may seem worse - harder, at least - to live through the despair of this loss without the temporary comfort of our addictive behaviour. We cannot drown our sorrows. We must face the fact that we don’t know, really, where we are, how we got here, how long the pain will last, or how to move past it. That uncertainty may be the most painful part of not knowing a God: no one is there to reassure us that a God will take the pain and confusion away. We simply don’t know. And we have no way to numb ourselves or to forget the condition we’re in.”

KnowsWayMayLongFactsSeemsPainLastsPastFacesMovingLossForgetKnowingConditionsSorrowComfortDespairHarderPainfulGods WillConfusionUncertaintyTemporaryNot KnowingBehaviourNumbHis Loss
Author:Marya Hornbacher
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“Everything that has ever lived, plant or animal, dates its beginning from the same primordial twitch. At some point in an unimaginably distant past, some little bag of chemicals fidgeted to life. It absorbed some nutrients, gently pulsed, had a brief existence. This much may have happened many times before. But this ancestral packet did something additional and extraordinary. It cleaved itself and produced an heir. A tiny bundle of genetic material passed from one living entity to another, and has never stopped moving since. It was the moment of creation for us all.”

MayLittlesMomentsPastMovingAnimalExistenceHappenedCreationMaterialsPlantExtraordinaryTinyBagsChemicalsEntityHeirsBundlesNutrients
Book:A Short History of Nearly Everything
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“The explorers of the past were great men and we should honour them. But let us not forget that their spirit lives on. It is still not hard to find a man who will adventure for the sake of a dream or one who will search, for the pleasure of searching, not for what he may find.”

MenShouldMayStillsHardDreamPastSpiritForgetPleasureAdventureSakeGreat MenExplorationHonourExplorersMt Everest
Book:High Adventure: Our Ascent of the Everest
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“The art of the poem nowadays is something unstable; but at least the construction of the poem should make sense; you should know where you stand. Many questions haven't been answered as yet. Our poets may be wrong; but what can any of us do with his talent but try to develop his vision, so that through frequent failures we may learn better what we have missed in the past.”

KnowsShouldTryingMayArtPastVisionTalentHavensPoetMake SenseConstructionUnstableWhere You Stand
Author:William Carlos Williams
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“In the sixties, the recycling of pop culture turning it into Pop art and camp had its own satirical zest. Now we're into a different kind of recycling. Moviemakers give movies of the past an authority that those movies didn't have; they inflate images that may never have compelled belief, images that were no more than shorthand gestures and they use them not as larger-than-life jokes but as altars.”

GivingKindMayArtDifferentUsePastCultureBeliefAuthorityJokesPopsCampsDifferent KindsGesturesSixtyCompelledAltarsPop CultureRecyclingSatiricalZestLarger Than LifePop ArtShorthand
Author:Pauline Kael
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“No one punishes the evil-doer under the notion, or for the reason, that he has done wrong -- only the unreasonable fury of a beast acts in that way. But he who desires to inflict rational punishment does not retaliate for a past wrong, for that which is done cannot be undone, but he has regard to the future, and is desirous that the man who is punished, and he who sees him punished, may be deterred from doing wrong again.”

MenWayMayDoeReasonDonePastDesireEvilHe ManRegardNotionPunishmentRationalBeastFuryUndoneUnreasonableDoersEvil DoersPast Wrongs
Author:Plato
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“While I complain of being able to glimpse no more than the shadow of the past, I may be insensitive to reality as it is taking shape at this very moment, since I have not reached the stage of development at which I would be capable of perceiving it. A few hundred years hence, in this same place, another traveller, as despairing as myself, will mourn the disappearance of what I might have seen, but failed to see.”

YearsMayMomentsRealityMightWould BeAblePastStageDevelopmentShapesCapableHundredShadowComplainingGlimpseMournTravellerDisappearanceInsensitiveStages Of Development
Book:Tristes Tropiques
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“Unless you can muse in a crowd all day On the absent face that fixed you; Unless you can love, as the angels may, With the breadth of heaven betwixt you; Unless you can dream that his faith is fast, Through behoving and unbehoving; Unless you can die when the dream is past — Oh, never call it loving!”

MayDreamPastFacesDiesHeavenAngelCrowdsFixedMuseAbsentBreadth
Book:Sonnets from the Portuguese and Other Poems
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“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!”

IfsLoveFirstsHeartMaySoulMomentsGodEyeChristianPastJoyPurposeJesusCausesUnderstandingChristMy OwnAcceptingLordGoneTroubleAcceptanceBecomingVictoryCircumstancesSorrowBlessingRefuseChristian InspirationalLiftsTouchingTrust In GodThronesPastorTestingCommitment To GodConfidence In GodGod Within UsTouch MeGod Is In ControlGod Works In Mysterious Ways
Author:Alan Redpath
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“My grandfather was a most gifted person, and amongst his many qualities, one of them had always particularly impressed me. While the past was a book he had read and re-read may times, the future was just one more literary work of art into which he used to pour himself with deep thought and concentration. Innumerable people since his death have told me how he used to read in the future, and this certainly was one of his very great strengths.”

PeopleMayPersonsArtBookPastUsedQualityJust OneConcentrationWorks Of ArtGrandfatherImpressedGiftedDeep ThoughtMy GrandfatherLiterary Works
Author:Aga Khan IV
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“Children must be free to think in all directions irrespective of the peculiar ideas of parents who often seal their children's minds with preconceived prejudices and false concepts of past generations. Unless we are very careful, very careful indeed, and very conscientious, there is still great danger that our children may turn out to be the same kind of people we are.”

PeopleThinkingMindKindMayChildrenStillsIdeasPastTurnsParentGenerationsDangerConceptsPrejudiceOur ChildrenCarefulPeculiarSealsPast Generations
Author:Brock Chisholm
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“Today we must abandon competition and secure cooperation. This must be the central fact in all our considerations of international affairs; otherwise we face certain disaster. Past thinking and methods did not prevent world wars. Future thinking must prevent wars...The stakes are immense, the task colossal the time is short. But we may hope- we must hope- that man's own creation, man's own genius, will not destroy him.”

ThinkingMenWorldMayWarFactsTodayPastFacesCertainCreationGeniusTasksMethodCompetitionAffairInternationalDisasterSecureWar Of The WorldsConsiderationAbandonCooperationStakesImmensePeacemakingColossalInternational AffairsFuture Thinking
Author:Albert Einstein
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“Our understanding of the thought of the past is liable to be the more adequate, the less the historian is convinced of the superiority of his own point of view, or the more he is prepared to admit the possibility that he may have to learn something, not merely about the thinkers of the past, but from them.”

MayPastUnderstandingViewsPossibilityPreparedPoint Of ViewConvincedThinkerHistorianSuperiorityAdequateLiable
Book:What is Political Philosophy? And Other Studies
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“Like sex, poverty and power, suicide may always be with us. But like them again, the actual form is takes is essentially time-specific and culture-bound, not only in the past but in the present too. The people who took their lives, the paths which led them to that end, and the experience of dying in this way were deeply influenced by specific historical circumstances. Only by making a greater effort at historical understanding can this most secret house of death be made to yield up more of its confidences.”

PeopleWayMayMadeEndsPastFormCultureHouseSexUnderstandingEffortSecretPovertyPathGreaterDyingCircumstancesSuicideHistoricalBoundsYieldBritish History
Author:David Cannadine
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