Dreaming Of The Past Quotes & Sayings

Among this people there is no leisure class. We often forget that in the United States over half the youth and adults are not in the world earning incomes, but are making homes, learning of the world, or resting after the heat of the strife. But here ninety-six per cent are toiling; no one with leisure to turn the bare and cheerless cabin into a home, no old folks to sit beside the fire and hand down traditions of the past; little of careless happy childhood and dreaming youth. — W.E.B. Du Bois

When you got no future, Billy, you got no past - no dreaming to guide you into the future. Gotta have your dreaming of you get lost ... — Gary Taaffe

Approaching the state of Delaware, the dreamer is a small dog, dreaming impatiently of a past life, long forgotten, when he sailed tall ships across uncharted. The salt spray of the ocean stings my face. — Neil Gaiman

There comes a point in life where each one of us who survives begins to feel like a ghost that has forgotten to die at the right time, and certainly most of us were more amusing when we were young. It seems that age folds the heart in on itself. Some of us walk detached, dreaming on the past, and some of us realize that we have lost the trick of standing in the sun. For many of us the thought of the future is a cause for irritation rather than optimism, as if we have had enough of new things, and wish only for the long sleep that rounds the edges of our lives — Louis De Bernieres

The traces of our life here will lie cold and still, dreaming, like the brittle eyes of dolls in an abandoned cabin, and the last men will look to them for explanations, or apologies. — Tim Cahill

The log on the fire: is it dreaming of the forest? — Marty Rubin

She had dreamed some brilliant dreams during the past winter and now they lay in the dust around her. In her present mood of self-disgust, she could not immediately begin dreaming again. And she discovered that, while solitude with dreams is glorious, solitude without them has few charms. — L.M. Montgomery

Let that be a reminder to you that the past is one thing, but what we make of it, the conclusions we draw, is another. History can be many things, depending on how we read it, just as the future can be many things, depending on how we live it. There is no inevitability to any historical occurrence, only what people will allow to take place. And it is by dreaming first that we get to new realities. — Yann Martel

The pot-thrower in the hut behind the shop, hands and forearms slick with clay, dreaming, yes, of the years in which a life took shape, when each press of a fingertip sent a deep track across a once smooth surface, changing the future, reshaping the past, and was this not as much chance as design? For all that intent could score a path, that the ripples sent up and down and outward could be surmised by decades of experience, was the outcome ever truly predictable? — Steven Erikson

That adolescent me, the girl who was, as I remember her, insecure, unsure, dreaming, yearning, longing, that girl who was hard on herself, who was cowardly and brave, who was confused and determined-that girl who was me-still exists. I call on her when I write. I am the me of today-the person who has become a woman, a mother, a writer. Yet I am the me of all those other days as well. I believe in the reality of that past. — Norma Fox Mazer

I've walked past so many pennies in my life, never bothering to pick them up because none of them were ever appealing to me. Then one day, I literally crashed into the most gorgeous penny I'd ever seen, so I picked her up off the ground, wiped away her tears, and became mesmerized by her every movement. Stupidly, I let that penny get away from me, and I've regretted it ever since. You were my lucky penny, Audrey, and I've been dreaming about you for years. — Kimberly Lauren

Conscious dreaming allows us to fold time and travel into the future or the past, as well as explore other life experiences. Beyond all of this, it may allow us to be present at the place of creation - the plane on which the events and circumstances of physical life are born. — Robert Moss

Life was about loss. One minute standing on the promise of your dreams, then free-falling backward into nothingness. Is this what it meant to grow old? To gradually be stripped of all you cared about. And then what? Were you supposed to spend the rest of your life, dreaming about the past while you waited to die? Or did you start a new life, set the cycle in motion once again. Take the chance of losing that, too. And if you did, what happened to the old life? Did it die away from lack of attention? — Shelley Noble

Therefore, the places in which we have experienced day dreaming reconstitute themselves in a new daydream, and it is because our memories of former dwelling-places are relived as day-dreams these dwelling-places of the past remain in us for all the time. — Gaston Bachelard

Being born is a burst of colors...and living life without LIFE is black and white. Expectations are everything, life is absolute. Dreaming is life's wisdom, glean what you can. Living life DAILY without remembering the lessons of the past you will resume the wrong path of the past Mindless excuses become mindless regrets. — Santiago Martinez

Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close in an hour. Which way does your beard point tonight?
(I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the supermarket and feel absurd.)
Will we walk all night through solitary streets? The trees add shade to shade, lights out in the houses, we'll both be lonely.
Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love past blue automobiles in driveways, home to our silent cottage?
Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher, what America did you have when Charon quit poling his ferry and you got out on a smoking bank and stood watching the boat disappear on the black waters of Lethe? — Allen Ginsberg

All items listed above belong in the world
In which all things are continuous,
And are parts of the original dream which
I am now trying to discover the logic of. This
Is the process whereby pain of the past in its pastness
May be converted into the future tense
Of joy.
I Am Dreaming of a White Christmas: The Natural History of a Vision (1974) — Robert Penn Warren

I realized early that despite her gregarious and inherently buoyant disposition, a certain sadness resided in my mother. Even I, her only child, whom she loved more than anything in the world, could do little to soothe the sorrow that has taken root with the separation from her parents, her two sisters and her brother. The contrast in the life my mother experienced before and after leaving Tibet was so extreme, it must have been impossible for her to make sense of her life and to escape the inexhaustible longing for the past. Caring for me on her own inside crowded rooms of tenement buildings in towns and cities, she must have felt she had dreamt her past or that she was dreaming her present existence. The places and residences we lived in were never quite home to her and led her to cling, more tenaciously, to the past. My mother had guarded her past sorrows from me because she knew me well enough to sense I would carry her grief as my own. — Tsering Wangmo Dhompa

The future is foretold from the past and the future is only possible because of the past. Without past and future, the present is partial. All time is eternally present and so all time is ours. There is no sense in forgetting and every sense in dreaming. Thus the present is made rich. — Jeanette Winterson

I dreamed of myself in a dream, and told the dream, which was mine, as if it were another person's of whom I dreamed. Indeed what is life when thinking of the past, but dreaming of a dream dreamt by another who seems to be oneself? — Stopford Brooke

I walk across the dreaming sands under the pale moon: through the dreams of countries and cities, past dreams of places long gone and times beyond recall. — Neil Gaiman

She moves like beauty, she whispers to us of wind and forest - and she tells us stories, such stories that we wake in the night, dreaming dreams of a life long past. she reminds us of what we used to be.

She reminds us of what we could be. — Meagan Spooner

I'll never stop dreaming that one day we can be a real family, together, all of us laughing and talking, loving and understanding, not looking at the past but only to the future. — LaToya Jackson

I'll tell you all about it, but let's eat first. I've had nothing to eat. Although I was offered some raw squirrel. Canned pudding, that's what I want. I've been dreaming about it."
She hauled out a can and feverishly worked the can opener. She didn't wait for a dish or spoon, but thrust her hand in and scooped some into her mouth. Then she stood transfixed, overwhelmed by the wonderful sweetness of it.
She was crying when she said, "I'm sorry, I've forgotten how to be polite. I'll get you guys your own can."
Sam hobbled over and scooped some pudding of his own, following her lead. "I'm way past polite myself," he said, although she could see he was a little appalled by her wolfish behavior. She decided then that she liked him. — Michael Grant

The last glow of sundown dims away. Stars appear in the east. Night encloses us. The ocean seems to enlarge. When you're adrift at night, imagination and perception merge. They have to. You can't see as well, as far, as deep. You tie knots by muscle memory, and you operate your reel mostly by feel. Your boat drifts, your thoughts drift. You sense the sweep of tide and water, and the boat gets rocked in turbulence just past each undersea ridgeline and boulder field. You, too, are looking up, searching constellations, dreaming. You fell again how flexible and expansive your mind can be when it's working right. And you slip your leash to explore the vast vault of sky and great interior spaces. — Carl Safina

It's one of the greatest honors I could ever imagine - to be able to represent my country and to be able to wear "USA" on my back. It's an incredible honor. It's an accomplishment of the past four year but of a life of dreaming and working hard and doing everything I can in pursuit of this goal. — Elana Meyers

The woods do that to you, they always look familiar, long lost, like the face of a long-dead relative, like an old dream, like a piece of forgotten song drifting across the water, most of all like golden eternities of past childhood or past manhood and all the living and the dying and the heartbreak that went on a million years ago and the clouds as they pass overhead seem to testify by their own lonesome familiarities to this feeling. Ecstasy, even , I felt, with flashes of sudden remembrance, and feeling sweaty and drowsy I felt like sleeping and dreaming in the grass. — Jack Kerouac

Lucas Benes lay in a sleeping bag on the roof of his father's hotel, dreaming about a past he couldn't remember. — Paul Aertker

Light is the only connection we have with the Universe beyond our solar system, and the only connection our ancestors had with anything beyond Earth. Follow the light and we can journey from the confines of our planet to other worlds that orbit the Sun without ever dreaming of spacecraft. To look up is to look back in time, because the ancient beams of light are messengers from the Universe's distant past. — Brian Cox

Always live your life with one dream to fulfill. No matter how many of your dreams you have realized in the past, always have a dream to go. Because when you stop dreaming, life becomes a mundane existence. — Sara Henderson

Both good and evil, when they are full grown, become retrospective ... That is what mortals misunderstand. They say of some temporary suffering, 'No future bliss can make up for it,' not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory. And of some sinful pleasure they say 'Let me but have this and I'll take the consequences': little dreaming how damnation will spread back and back into their past and contaminate the pleasure of the sin. — C.S. Lewis

A Gift for You
I send you ...
The gift of a letter from your wise self. This is the part of you that sees you with benevolent, loving eyes. You find this letter in a thick envelope with your name on it, and the word YES written boldly above your name.
My Dear,
I am writing this to remind you of your 'essence beauty.' This is the part of you that has nothing to do with age, occupation, weight, history, or pain. This is the soft, untouched, indelible you. You can love yourself in this moment, no matter what you have, or haven't done or been.
See past any masks, devices, or inventions that obscure your essence.
Remember your true purpose, WHICH is only Love.
If you cannot see or feel love, lie down now and cry; it will cleanse your vision and free your heart.
I love you; I am you. — SARK

In the past I had often tried to escape the grown-up world of sorrow through my imagination- dreaming that a handsome young lieutenant would ride to my rescue or that a great empresario would discover my musical talents and whisk me away. I had envisioned knights in shining armor and happily ever after scenes to escape from rules or boredom or pain; including a vision of my mother walking through our front door whole and well again. Now I knew that a lifetime of escape led to a life like Aunt Bertie's. My imagination was a gift, but I had to live in the real world. My eyes had been opened this summer to poverty and crime and abuse and I needed to use my imagination not to escape, but to help people like Irina and Katya, to make my own contribution as the women in the women's pavilion had done. I couldn't do it in the same way Jane Adams and my grandmother and Aunt Mat were, but I would find my own way and my own time. — Lynn Austin

Perhaps looking at the forensics of your past can catapult you forward in a way that merely dreaming can never attain! — T.D. Jakes

I had some wonderful dreaming meetings. I can't tell you specifically what they've been in the recent months. In the past they've been verbal kinds of messages that he needed to give me. Now they're more dreams of his presence. — Judy Collins

I'm not singing for the future
I'm not dreaming of the past
I'm not talking of the fist time
I never think about the last — Shane MacGowan

Strange dim memories, which will not abide identification, often, through misty windows of the past, look out upon me in the broad daylight, but I never dream now. It may be, notwithstanding, that, when most awake, I am only dreaming the more! But when I wake at last into that life which as a mother her child, carries life in its bosom, I shall know that I wake, and shall doubt no more. I wait; asleep or awake, I wait. — George MacDonald

I had forgotten the joy of strolling around on a moonlit night.

It was far too long in the past where rain fell light against my skin. My spine tingled, and my little arm hairs would stick straight out. I strolled around where wishes and wonders hibernated. I had it for the briefest moments, perhaps in some weird kind of eternity, if you philosophized about it in the right way. Yet, I couldn't turn away from what I knew was inescapable. — Pupola

I saw his eyes go up and he looked past me, toward the door, as if he were watching it, waiting. But there was no one there, it did not open, no one left or came in. I wondered if he was actually dreaming of escape. — S.J. Watson

I do an awful lot of thinking and dreaming about things in the past and the future - the timelessness of the rocks and the hills - all the people who have existed there. I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape - the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn't show. — Andrew Wyeth