Facing Your Past Quotes & Sayings

The toughest thing is facing yourself. Being honest with yourself, that's much tougher than beating someone up. That's what I call tough. — Joe Strummer

I would guess that the decision to create a small special purpose language or use an existing general purpose language is one of the toughest decisions that anyone facing the need for a new language must make. — Guido Van Rossum

Although we amplify our cognitive degree of awareness and enhance our appreciation for life experiences by maturing, it also brings us death. Facing a certain death forces a person to examine the worthiness of continuing to live. — Kilroy J. Oldster

If you fear looking at your true self, you'll find many ways to distract yourself from it. Busyness, drama, and addictions are ways of avoiding facing yourself. To find the peace you seek, stop running and just he. Get to know who you really are. Remember the wholeness you felt before you joined the rush to nowhere. Then you'll recognize yourself through the eyes of love, and everything will be different. — Alan Cohen

Facing future I see hope, hope that we will survive, hope that we will
prosper, hope that once again we will reap the blessings of this
magical land, for without hope I cannot live, remember the past but
do not dwell there, face the future where all our hopes stand. — Israel Kamakawiwo'ole

Some students look at the problems that they're facing and they draw global conclusions from them. They say this is not just a professor giving me a bad grade or someone not sitting next to me in the cafeteria. This reflects that fact that I am not ready for college, or I shouldn't be in this college at all. — Shankar Vedantam

I was facing him before the last word was out, but I should have been dead by then. In a way I did die, right there, all that time ago, and this is a ghost who has been telling you stories and drinking your wine. You don't understand. Never mind. — Peter S. Beagle

Especially for those of us who lived in single cells, you had the time to sit down and think, and we discovered that sitting down just to think is one of the best ways of keeping yourself fresh and able, to be able to address the problems facing you, and you had the opportunity, also, of examining your past. — Nelson Mandela

Before yoga, my life was filled with regret about choices I'd made in the past, and fears about choices I'd make in the future. Yoga teaches us how to be present in the present. Once you learn how to live in the now, you realize that the past is a memory and the future doesn't exist. Yoga will help anyone facing anxiety issues, separation and attachment issues (moms, I'm talking to you here!), or serious illnesses such as cancer and depression. It's a practice that slims your body while expanding your heart. — Kathryn E. Livingston

I do think that the sense of being opposed to the present moment, that sense of the rub of history, invigorates the writing I find most exciting, and maybe precisely in being equally allegiant to an inward fineness of sensibility and an outward-facing rigor of protest or critique. — Garth Greenwell

I thought I was growing wings
it was a cocoon.
I thought, now is the time to step
into the fire
it was deep water.
Eschatology is a word I learned
as a child: the study of Last Things;
facing my mirror - no longer young,
the news - always of death,
the dogs - rising from sleep and clamoring
and howling, howling ...
("Seeing For a Moment") — Denise Levertov

That's what courage is. Taking your disappointments and your failures, your guilt and your shame, all the wounds received and inflicted, and sinking them in the past. Starting again. Damning yesterday and facing tomorrow with your head held high. Times change. It's those that see it coming, and plan for it, and change themselves to suit that prosper. — Joe Abercrombie

Facing up to the nightmare of the past is what gives you the power to build your future. — Lev Grossman

The problem is that the Iraqi people are facing atrocities from both sides - Zarqawi and also the American troops at times. The Zarqawi groups uses car bombs, the Americans use other bombs. You also know what they do in the prisons. — Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani

Instead of facing a crisis as I approached middle age, I discovered that a new and better life lay before me. I called the process of discovery 'halftime,' and the outcome led to my second half. — Bob Buford

I am always shocked to discover how many people believe that hardships are a punishment from God! When people face tests or see others facing tests, they assume Allah must be angry with them. SubhannAllah! Remember which people were tested the most: The Prophets! And they were the closest to Allah. Every hardship is good for you-if it brings you closer to Him! — Yasmin Mogahed

Writing is a way of facing life. — Marty Rubin

ASTROLOGY PREDICTIVE FORE GLANCE KNOW-HOW LIGHT FLASH IS NEEDED TO ALL HUMANS IN THIS MODERN CENTURY TO UNVEIL THE SECRETS OF GOD UNIVERSE FUTURE DIVINE DRAFT.SO,RESEARCH IN ASTROLOGY HAS TO BE DEMANDED ON AROUND THE GLOBE TO HAVE GRIP ON SOUL FACING NEXT MICRO SECOND. — Various

You're trying to escape from your difficulties, and there never is any escape from difficulties, never. They have to be faced and fought. — Enid Blyton

Observe the persistence, in mankind's mythologies, of the legend about a paradise that men had once possessed, the city of Atlantis or the Garden of Eden or some kingdom of perfection, always behind us. The root of that legend exists, not in the past of the race, but in the past of every man. You still retain a sense - not as firm as a memory, but diffused like the pain of hopeless longing - that somewhere in the starting years of your childhood, before you had learned to submit, to absorb the terror of unreason and to doubt the value of your mind, you had known a radiant state of existence, you had known the independence of a rational consciousness facing an open universe. That is the paradise which you have lost, which you seek - which is yours for the taking. — Ayn Rand

The past could destroy you, sink its teeth deep and rip out your heart... Or your soul. She didn't know what was worse. But she knew damn well the man waiting in her office could do both. She wasn't looking forward to facing her past. — Heather R. Blair

The pressure you are facing is not going to break you. It's going to make you. — Victoria Osteen

If you are in a pit of stress or despair, don't succumb to defeat. Don't accept that difficult place as your fate. Even though God has allowed you to be there right now, he never intended for you to live there. Our God is bigger then whatever problem you are facing. The only way to see past the problem is to believe that he has not forgotten or abandoned you and that, at the exact time that he has ordained, he will reach down and pick you up. — Tracie Miles

We tend to focus on assets and forget about debts. Financial security requires facing up to the big picture: assets minus debts. — Suze Orman

THE ACCEPTANCE OF SUFFERING is a journey into death. Facing deep pain, allowing it to be, taking your attention into it, is to enter death consciously. When you have died this death, you realize that there is no death - and there is nothing to fear. Only the ego dies. Imagine a ray of sunlight that has forgotten it is an inseparable part of the sun and deludes itself into believing it has to fight for survival and create and cling to an identity other than the sun. Would the death of this delusion not be incredibly liberating? DO YOU WANT AN EASY DEATH? Would you rather die without pain, without agony? Then die to the past every moment, and let the light of your presence shine away the heavy, time-bound self you thought of as "you. — Eckhart Tolle

Can you catch the expression of the Sperm Whale's there? It is the same he died with, only some of the longer wrinkles in the forehead seem now faded away. I think his broad brow to be full of a prairie-like placidity, born of a speculative indifference as to death. But mark the other head's [Right Whale] expression. See that amazing lower lip, pressed by accident against the vessel's side, so as firmly to embrace the jaw. Does not this whole head seem to speak of an enormous practical resolution in facing death? This Right Whale I take to have been a Stoic; the Sperm Whale, a Platonian, who might have taken up Spinoza in his latter years. — Herman Melville

The lesson of the Cuban Missile Crisis is plain: Strength prevents war; weakness invites it. We need a commander-in-chief who understands that - and who won't leave us facing a foe who thinks he doesn't. — Arthur L. Herman

Men should not be sexing their women in the missionary position because they are facing away from the sky. Instead of looking down, men are to look up. To the vastness of Father Sky — Matthew Fox

When facing the apparent denial of my request, God gave me the opportunity to honor him by trusting His Word. — Charles Spurgeon

Eager to hear more about the aforementioned behaviors of the ill-bred Miss Bowman, Livia leaned back against the edge of the desk, facing Marcus. "I wonder what Miss Bowman did to offend you so?" she mused aloud. "Do tell, Marcus. If not, my imagination will surely conjure up something far more scandalous than poor Miss Bowman is capable of."
"Poor Miss Bowman?" Marcus snorted. "Don't ask, Livia. I'm not at liberty to discuss it."
Like most men, Marcus didn't seem to understand that nothing torched the flames of a woman's curiosity more violently than a subject that one was not at liberty to discuss. "Out with it, Marcus," she commanded. "Or I shall make you suffer in unspeakable ways."
One of his brows lifted in a sardonic arch. "Since the Bowmans have already arrived, that threat is redundant. — Lisa Kleypas

If you're facing what looks like a large problem, receive it as a compliment from the Universe. What a great soul you must be! — Mary Morrissey

Then he looked up, despite all best prior intentions. In four minutes, it would be another hour; a half hour after that was the ten-minute break. Lane Dean imagined himself running around on the break, waving his arms and shouting gibberish and holding ten cigarettes at once in his mouth, like a panpipe. Year after year, a face the same color as your desk. Lord Jesus. Coffee wasn't allowed because of spills on the files, but on the break he'd have a big cup of coffee in each hand while he pictured himself running around the outside grounds, shouting. He knew what he'd really do on the break was sit facing the wall clock in the lounge and, despite prayers and effort, count the seconds tick off until he had to come back and do this again. And again and again and again. — David Foster Wallace

Run towards the roar,' the old people used to tell the young ones. When faced with great danger and when people panic and seek a false sense of safety, run towards the roaring and go where you fear to go. For only in facing your fears can you find some safety and a way through. When the world rattles and the end seems near, go towards the roar. — Michael Meade

He leaned towards me, and I did what any reasonable person would do when facing imminent death by being eaten alive. I screamed. — Donald G. Firesmith

Awe is the moment when ego surrenders to wonder. This is our inheritance - the beauty before us. We cry. We cry out. There is nothing sentimental about facing the desert bare. It is a terrifying beauty. — Terry Tempest Williams

Outside the cage, in the bullshit society we've created for ourselves, the truth is sometimes hard to see. But inside the octagon, with a crowd screaming for blood, and the smell of sweat and fear in the air, the truth is facing you, as clear as day. If you're the fastest, the quickest, the smartest, and you don't lose your cool, you'll survive. You'll be the victor. — Ozlo Grey

One of the first exercises we did in acting class my freshman year was to stand in two rows, two lines facing each other as a class, and just make sounds and move in some completely nonsensical way out into the center of the room. Sort of make an idiot out of yourself, essentially, but to be okay with that. — Chris Parnell

After facing backlash from customers, Subway says it will remove a chemical in its bread that is also found in yoga mats. Some people were like, 'You mean I've been eating a dangerous chemical?' While most people were like, 'You mean I can eat my yoga mat?' — Jimmy Fallon

We enter a time of calamity. Blood on the tarmac. Fingers in the juicer. Towers of air frozen in the lunar wastes. Models dead on the runways, with their legs facing backward. Children with smiles that can't be undone. Chicken shall rot in the aisles. See the pillars fall. — M T Anderson

America must not ignore the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof, the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud. — George W. Bush

We women were facing up to life with our own our bodies as our only asset. We may not have smelled like roses, but we got to learn all about life and freedom in our own way. (Kang 1989: 11) — Kang Sok-Kyong

In a recent experiment, men were asked to rank how attractive they found photographs of different women's faces. The photos were eight by ten inches, and showed women facing the camera or turned in three-quarter profile. Unbeknownst to the men, in half the photos the eyes of the women were dilated, and in the other half they were not. The men were consistently more attracted to the women with dilated eyes. Remarkably, the men had no insight into their decision making. None of them said, "I noticed her pupils were two millimeters larger in this photo than in this other one." Instead, they simply felt more drawn toward some women than others, for reasons they couldn't quite put a finger on. — David Eagleman

Facing one of my own species terrified me far more than fighting an army of blood spitting bugs. — Pam Godwin

Blake sat down as well, facing her. The moon now claimed the sky as hers, surfacing slowly over the trees. Blake tested her hand-drawn keys, and in his head he heard a full piano play his heart out loud for her.
Livia clapped when he was done. She put her hand behind his head and pulled his lips close. "I think I heard it," she whispered before kissing him. — Debra Anastasia

Read the right books. Learn how those who have preceded you have handled the challenges you are currently facing. — Robin S. Sharma

After fifteen years of facing them (pitchers) you don't really get over them. They're devious. They're the only players in the game allowed to cheat. They throw illegal pitches and they sneak foreign substances on the ball. They can inflict pain whenever they wish. And, they're the only ones on the diamond who have high ground. That's symbolic. You know what they tell you in a war - 'take the high ground first.' — Richie Ashburn